Innehållsförteckning för Issue 109 från Tabletop Gaming

Designer: Matt Edmondson | Publisher: Format Games Trivia games are a staple genre of board gaming, but one you might have been permanently deterred from in childhood. I’m pleased to say that things have got a lot more fun since the days of reading dry Trivial Pursuit questions on rainy afternoons. Have a go at this one: How many letters are there in the longest word in the Oxford dictionary? But hold on, don’t answer too quickly, you don’t want to get it too right. This is a quiz game with a difference. It celebrates the centre ground, the non-descript, the not-too-wrong-but-not-too-right, the jacks of all trades and the most average of joes. Every answer is a number, and your aim is to write an average answer. You don’t want…

Designer: Emiliano Sciarra | Publisher: DV Games Have you got what it takes to become a legend in the Wild West? It’s time to find out in this 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…

Designers: Rob Sparks, Brett J. Gilbert | Publisher: Alley Cat Games Anyone who’s read my reviews will know that I love nothing more than a tiny, quick-to-explain game. Having said that, there is a real art to getting it right, and so when I find one I like, I really do shout about it. Kittin, was one such game, a game contained in a tiny tin that involved stacking cat shaped meeples in formations on cards quickly. “Make the pattern in the picture and don’t let it fall” is basically all you need to know. Kittin wasn’t alone though, Alley Cat Games also gave us Tinderblox (“Make the pattern in the picture and don’t let it fall” but using tweezers), a Pusheen version of Kittin (see p36), and more recently,…

Designer: Luca Bellini | Publisher: LEGO This game brings the magic of LEGO into the world of tabletop gaming. It is a remake of a previous game – Brick Party – from a decade ago by the same designer, but this time with LEGO’s official involvement. Updated and now with real LEGO pieces, Brick Like This! is bright, colourful and contains a huge amount of variety, but is it worth getting to the table? In teams of two (or three when there are an odd number of players), you compete to score the most points over six rounds. Team members take turns to describe and build the shapes on the cards. This task seems incredibly simple when you choose a five-point card. An abstract shape is drawn, built of five…

Designer: Ammon Anderson | Publisher: The OP Games The rulebook for this game is a work of art. Once you pull yourself away from reading about it, the whole experience is a slice of cosy brilliance. Meet Holly, Poppy and their friends, the native gnomes of the forest. They spend their days building circles of colourful mushrooms, collecting flowers of all shades and hoarding the various shining treasures they find. Let me tell you about the rulebook and just how impressive it really is. The creator has beautifully melded clear instructions with thematic context in the form of handwritten notes from someone who has discovered and documented the world of the gnomes. Illustrations are all glorious watercolour, scrapbook paintings. Everything about it is engaging and enchanting, yet at the same…

Designer: Satoru Nakamura | Publisher: Allplay Push your luck games always seem to go down well in our household. Whether it’s eating tasty brains in Zombie Dice, diving for sunken treasure in Deep Sea Adventure or mining for gold in My Gold Mine, this genre of games has a tendency to be easy to explain and quick to play. What’s more, there’s nothing better than watching your opponent risk it all… only to get blasted by a shotgun, stranded at the bottom of the ocean or roasted by a dragon. Lure, on the other hand, is a push your luck game with a slight difference. You see, rather than always trying to roll the most dice or collect the most treasure, Lure encourages you to keep things small but hopefully…

Designer: Mitsuru Nakamura | Publisher: Arcane Wonders Some games are just more complex to articulate with words than they are to demonstrate in person. Mitsuru Nakamura’s ito is one such devil. It’s best taught by actually playing, with participants dealt into the round immediately. After just a couple of minutes, everyone is on the same page and ready to fully commit. The hook is sumptuous. This is a cooperative party game where players are randomly dealt a secret number card. These cards are pulled from a deck containing a unique value of 1-100. A separate category card is then flipped over and read aloud. These provoke consideration along a spectrum. So, with “Famous people you would like to meet,” a value of 1 is someone you wouldn’t want to meet…

Designers: Matthew Dunstan, Dave Neale | Publisher: Space Cowboys I’m a sucker for a cooperative game and Perspectives does something special. It’s a slow-paced, intense game of depth, focus and communication. I say slow-paced. It ramps up, at the right table, as players take individual facts to build a full picture, sparking off each other’s descriptions and tripping over their own thoughts as they try to figure the whole thing out. If the group is right for it, this can be a rollercoaster ride of excitement. Perspectives (Blue) is the second Perspectives game, providing new scenarios for new players and those who have already played through the original (Orange) version. It’s a simple game. Each player gets a number of cards – if you are playing with more players, everyone…

Designers: Gary Kim, Hope S. Hwang, Yohan Goh | Publisher: Sorry We Are French/Funny Fox There aren’t an awful lot of games that can lure my child to the table these days, since he morphed into a gorgeous yet absent teenager. Dinosaur Island still sparks an interest (largely because he is John-Hammond-level good at it), as does Root (but only if he’s allowed to be the Woodland Alliance). Beyond that, it’s social games only, and with it the chance to flex an opinion – think Trial by Trolley (naturally with a few cards discretely edited out on suitability grounds) or Hues And Cues. Mind Map can now be added to that list. Banged out in three, blink-and-you’ll-miss-’em rounds, players compete to make everyone else guess their secret word. It all…

Designer: Christwart Conrad | Publisher: Heidelbar You can’t have too many filler card games (fact), so if you’re hunting for a new one, it’s well worth looking for Snatch It! Don’t be put off by the cartoony froggy theme, as while this does slot safely into the family card game category, there’s enough going on to keep your gamer pals happy, too. Snatch It! has its roots in the fishing/ladder-climbing card game traditions, as you’ll be playing numbered cards to match or beat others to claim cards/score points. However, there are enough clever little twists to make it stand out. The game has 108 purple and orange cards (54 of each) numbered 1-6, plus nine blue Swarm cards that can be used as a 0 or 7. These are shuffled…

Designer: Mariusz Majchrowski | Publisher: Trefl Eyes. Most people have them. Some might even have two. But should we trust them? Sure, they’re useful, but when it really comes down to it – specifically, when asked to pick out nine chalices scattered around a busy game board – are they up to the task? Spy Guy Fantasy, from Trefl, had me asking myself these questions, but, for now, let’s just take a look at what the game actually is. Despite its name suggesting some sort of saucy 007 fan-fiction, Spy Guy Fantasy is actually a cooperative family game tasking players with finding various things hiding within its vibrant and sprawling game board before time runs out. This is a sequel to 2022’s Spy Guy, and while not much has changed…

Designer: Benjie Talbott | Publisher: Cosy Cub Games Tabletop games allow you to travel the world. We’ve had the opportunity to visit France in Carcassonne. Travelled along the Tokaido road in Japan and had a little trip to Greece in Santorini. Well folks, get ready to add a new destination to your tabletop-themed holiday list: the delightful Welsh seaside town of Tenby. Kickstarted in 2024 and delivered earlier this year, Tenby is the first game from Benjie Talbot and Cosy Cub Games. Although not available directly in stores yet, the game was available from the likes of UK Games Expo and cosycubgames.com assures us that publisher Mighty Boards had copies at SPIEL Essen this year, with a full retail production available soon after. We had the opportunity to review the…

Designer: Hazel Reynolds | Publisher: Gamely Ltd If you’re a quick-thinking, risktaking quiz buff, then The Fast & the Curious might have what you’re looking for. This compact game consists of a deck of question cards, covering all sorts of general knowledge; from pop culture to ancient history, geography to culinary trivia, and just about any topic you could fathom. Alongside the cards are five numbered point tokens that are laid out depending on the number of players/teams you have. The first player becomes the questioner and draws a card, reading the question aloud as quickly or as slowly as they wish. At any point that another player thinks they know the answer to the question, they shout “mine!” and the questioner is silenced so no more of the…

Designer: Frank West | Publisher: The City of Games I love the idea of this game. It’s a spin off from Frank West’s fantasy adventure game City of Kings. The story of that game is that the world that was once populated by friendly dwarves and flying Vadora has been ruined by attackers. That game is a medium-weight, cooperative mission that incoporates exploration, battle and so many other mechanics and stories to get your teeth into. Vadoran Gardens, in contrast, is a light, tilelaying family game set in the same world. At this time, the Gardens of the Vadora are filled with flowers, lush grass and young Vadorans training for greatness. If I were a fan of City of Kings, I would relish the chance to enjoy the world…

Designer: Brett J. Gilbert, Trevor Benjamin | Publisher: Alley Cat Games I always say don’t judge a board game by its box, and yet here I was, excited about the prospect of another tin game – perfect to stash in my bag for impromptu sessions – but then became slightly worried by its name that it’s just another Tic Tac Toe game. I’ll be honest, I don’t think Tic Tac Toe deserves a deluxe version, no matter how much the artwork may need it. Luckily, I ignored that instinct, and headed through the instructions for Tic Tac Trek, and – name aside – this is great. The first surprise comes from its designers. Brett J. Gilbert designed The Guild of Merchant Explorers, Village Rails, Chocolate Factory and loads more. Trevor…

Designer: Cole Werhle | Publisher: Leder Games Move over Twilight Imperium, I think you’re about to be unseated. Arcs: the Blighted Reach is an expansion of the core game Arcs, in the most literal sense. It expands the game from compact space combat and resource game into a grand opera of player-driven narrative and complex and everchanging political allegiances. From the base game, The Blighted Reach takes the core actions and rules and adds new systems and mechanisms. I can’t cover it all here, and honestly, I don’t want to, so much of this expansion is about discovery and variety. Here’s the basics: now each player takes the role as a regent of the Empire, whose lumbering purple dreadnaughts populate the board, putting players into a temporary alliance as long…

Designers: Dennis K. Chan, Adam Hill, Ben Pinchback, Matt Riddle | Publisher: Cranio Creations Beyond the Sun was a hit back in 2020, and so the prospect of a pseudo-sequel utilising its much loved fusion of workerplacement and tech-tree mechanics has been hotly anticipated. Given the gameplay similarities between the two games, it’s best that my review adopts more of a comparison format where appropriate. Beyond the Horizon is a mid-toheavy-weight civilisation game built around a tried and tested tech-tree mechanic. Aside from thematically spanning across and branching through four eras of mankind’s historical technological progress on Earth rather than space (with celebrity appearances from Attila the Hun, Descartes, Einstein and the refrigerator), Beyond the Horizon’s tech-tree is identical to its predecessor: players take actions to install ‘population’ markers…

Designer: Reiner Knizia | Publisher: Bitewing Games While prolific designer Reiner Knizia drops multiple new titles every year, the majority of his releases are smaller card-based games. Cascadero is the less frequent large box title, a tile-laying game that borrows traits from Babylonia and Through the Desert, while not beholden to either. Surprisingly, it establishes an identity not on its stripped-back mechanisms or restraint, but on the chaining of combos that leads to cascading scoring and large swings. Even calling it a tile-layer is somewhat misleading. Each turn you place a single envoy meeple on the board. The goal is to place them adjacent to towns to trigger the scoring, but this only occurs if the envoy is placed adjacent to one you’ve placed on a previous turn and no…

Designer: Antoni Guillen | Publisher: Nuts! Publishing If you speak to most hardened board game veterans, you’ll usually find they have a predisposed excitement towards hexagonal tiles. So many of us had our first truly positive tabletop experiences with titles like Settlers of Catan, Hive and The Castles of Burgundy, that six-sided tiles can't help but unlock a nostalgic excitement within us. I felt that familiar bubble of anticipation as I unwrapped Diluvium, partly because this colourful game of economics and exploration is just a treat to look at. In an ancient world of seas and archipelagos, you are the leaders of civilisations in exile. Each of you is aiming to establish new settlements, gather food and store up enough treasure to crown your empire as the greatest. Nuts! Publishing’s…

Designer: Laurent Guilbert, Jérôme Daniel Snowrchoff | Publisher: Super Meeple Now lost beneath the cold North Sea, Doggerland was an area of land inhabited by humans thousands of years ago. In the 21st century, however, Doggerland is an action-programming based Eurogame for one to four players. How things change! In Doggerland, players each take control of a tribe of hunter-gatherers who must explore their changing terrain, while hunting for food and expanding their social civilisation. The game plays mostly like a typical Euro-style game, collecting resources and using them to generate points or more efficient actions. These actions include building upgrades, buying point-scoring tiles and sending your tribe on expeditions to gather natural resources, or to hunt down larger and angrier resources from the various animal denizens of the land.…

Designers: Aaron Dill, Joe Kepler, George Krubski, Sean Sweigart | Publisher: Gale Force Nine Last year I saw the largest board game box I’d ever seen. It was Frosthaven, and it was a gargantuan beast of a thing. I saw someone carrying it in a special trolley because it’s too large for a normal human to lift. The Firefly: The Game 10th Anniversary Collector’s Edition? It’s 40% larger than that. Yup, nearly twice the volume of an already ridiculously large game! “Why?”, we must ask. Well, first, this is an incredibly comprehensive box, containing absolutely every expansion, every promo card, a lovely sewn neoprene board, ship minis, holographic cards and custom dice. It’s got piece trays, custom vacuum moulded trays and covers for everything. Unlike some big sets, everything stays…

Designer: Asger Harding Granerud | Publisher: Days of Wonder In some ways, HEAT is the perfect game to release an expansion for: it has an enthusiastic competitive following, with people repeat-playing it hundreds of times, and it presents a modular strategic puzzle that is easily added to. On the other hand, the base game is unusually expansive already. I was intrigued to see if Heavy Rain brings enough to the table to be worth the price of an additional game. In the box you get the pieces for an additional player setup, another large, double-sided map, six new Advanced Upgrades, seven new Sponsor cards and four new Event cards. Weirdly, given the name “Heavy Rain”, there are no new Weather or Track Conditions tokens. The maps are the assets most…

Designers: Maël Brunet, Julien Chaput | Publisher: Mindclash When it comes to asymmetric strategy games, they can often be event games. Afternoons or even days can be set aside to tackle the likes of Star Wars: Rebellion or War of the Ring. Even the poster child of asymmetric strategy, Root, can be tricky to fit into a game night if you need the time to teach it as well. Enter Ironwood, a game promising a rules-light experience that you can play in around an hour but still enjoy the same strategic satisfaction of marshalling troops and cunning plans. Ironwood pits the guerrilla Woodwalkers against the industrial might of the Ironclad. Venturing out from their mountain cities, the Ironclad seek to harvest enough resources to construct three forges, securing their dominance…

Designers: Matt Brown, Zara Reid | Publisher: Mazaza Games It’s a rewild world out there, and if you’d like to help conserve it, then Kavango might be for you. This is a snappy card-drafting game with some light engine-building aspects based on the work being done in the nature reserves of Botswana and the surrounding areas. Kavango takes place over a svelte three rounds, each of which sees players pick-and-pass to draft a hand of cards, which are used to build and complement their nature reserve. Cards come in three types: actions, animals and food stocks. Action cards provide an immediate effect, such as gaining money or allowing you to take a card out of the discard pile, to retrieve an animal you sadly had to throw away in a…

Designers: Raul Franco Jiménez, Fran Martínez | Publisher: Devir Quorum is a game of two halves set in ancient Rome. No, that doesn’t mean it’s about Romans playing football. We’re talking about the fact that although it may be mechanically easy to play, the scoring is something else entirely. With that in mind then, let’s start with the easy bit: the mechanics of a turn. In the centre of the players is a small but beautifully illustrated map of Rome and six different provinces (Macedonia, Africa, Gallia, Germania, Hispania and Asia), which each have their own score track. Along with that, you’ve got a central market of available Rome or God cards. Again, these cards are very nicely illustrated, and the Rome cards are split into four differently coloured categories:…

Designer: Emerson Matsuuchi | Publisher: CMON Games Metal Gear Solid is a huge, epic endeavour. This is true both in its digital and analogue forms. CMON’s grand production is a treat, bringing the Hideo Kojima career-defining epic to the tabletop in splendid fashion. This stealth action board game allows players to experience the Shadow Moses storyline from an entirely new perspective. It’s rendered faithfully in cardboard and plastic, offering an emotional sojourn into the gripping narrative of one of the best video games ever crafted. This design was placed in the right hands. Emerson Matsuuchi is known for titles such as Century: Spice Road, Foundations of Rome, and a hidden movement game that is best in class – Specter Ops. Metal Gear Solid: The Board Game bears some of the…

Designers: Jo Kelly, Cole Wehrle | Publisher: Wehrlegig Molly House is the rare board game that is not about war or conflict, nor is it about nature or tranquillity. It’s a historical game set in 18th century London, but its central themes are kinship, freedom and happiness. Players take on the role of mollies, British socialites intent on exploring gender and sexuality that was not accepted in general society. To practice this way of life, you must gather in backrooms and underground establishments in order to partake in grand masquerades and passionate revelry. Secrecy is paramount, as the Society for the Reformation of Manners is hunting in the streets looking to squash any behaviour deemed deviant. Above all else, this is a unique game. Not just in theme and setting,…

Designer: Max Anderson et al. | Publisher: IV Studio Sometimes I really fancy playing something a bit like chess. A game that’s strategic and completely without luck; a two-player puzzle where we can outwit one another. I just don’t want the overwhelming complexity and requirement to rote-learn a thousand different openings that chess requires. Mythic Mischief aims to fill that space, and does it while wrapping the experience into a very more-ish theme. You play as naughty students in the Mythic Manor boarding school, trying to sneak around the library without getting caught by the terrifyingly solemn Tomekeeper. The vibe here is a U-rated Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with teams of Monsters, Wizards, Vampires and Ghosts competing to trick the Tomekeeper into catching their opponents. Gameplay is deceptively simple, with…

Designers: Eilif Svensson, Åsmund Svensson | Publisher: Chilifox Games Castles of Burgundy was one of the first hobby games I fell in love with. I still play regularly and while a few other similar tile-layers have stuck around on my shelves (notably Maori and Fertility), most others have fallen short. I’m pleased to say Spectacular has also bucked that trend. Spectacular is played over 15 turns, on each of which you’ll simultaneously choose two items (dice and/or tiles) to add to your animal reserve. Your board has 20 spaces, which can hold a tile and a die, so you won’t quite be filling it. Tiles must match by colour to make scoring areas, while placing dice onto them increases their scoring value. Each player has a unique set of starting…

Designers: 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 your basic starting 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. An astronaut can do…

Designers: Josh J. Carlson, Michael Gernes, Logan Giannini, Ryan Howard, Salem Scott, Josh Wielgus | Publisher: Chip Theory Games Another video game behemoth has landed on the tabletop. The fantasy roleplaying series The Elder Scrolls is known for its free-roam gameplay in an open world, allowing players to inhabit characters of various fantasy races and walks of life, setting off on an adventure across the seemingly endless lands of Tamriel. How do you fit all of that into a board game box? Well, first, it will weigh about 10kg, so hopefully you practiced your squat lifts to get that baby up on the board game shelf! Although the weight is mostly due to the satisfyingly chunky chips that the publisher, Chip Theory Games, is known for. Second, you will need…

Designer: Ryan Boucher | Publisher: Alley Cat Games Dam, what a lovely game. Timber Town is a very cute, two-player only, head-to-head game of planning, picking and placing. You and a friend each take the role of a beaver architect, trying to build the most valuable 4x4 grid-shaped city out of tiles. At the start of each round, a column of tiles is drawn and lined up against one edge of your empty town grid. Any unclaimed tiles from previous rounds are also pushed one step down, putting them in line with the second column of your board. From the available selection, you either take a tile and place it in the matching column of your board, or place your raft tile on one, reserving it for a future turn…

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 alphabetically ordered colours. Totally satisfying, I'd found it really peaceful, 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 else! It was…

Designers: Alessandro Zucchini, Leo Colovini | Publisher: Kosmos As kids grow up, it can sometimes be a little tricky to judge what new games to start throwing at them – not literally of course, because something like Twilight Imperium would end in a hospital visit. I mean that once they’ve got to grips with Ticket to Ride: First Journey, do you immediately start moving them onto the likes of more in-depth games, such as Agricola or The Castles of Burgundy? Well, if you don’t fancy taking that leap straight away, Australis attempts to blend simple rules with slightly more complex scoring mechanics. In the game, you are possibly a turtle swimming in the East Australian Current (EAC)… or maybe you’re the actual current. It’s not quite clear. Anyway, no matter…

Designer: Hazel Reynolds | Publisher: Gamely Ltd Bang! Out of Order is made up of a deck of cards with wacky and wonderful number-based trivia. How many airports are there in the world? How many wild snakes are there in Ireland? How many nipples does a pig have? You get the gist. Split into two teams, you create a scale from zero to infinity by laying out two cards at each end of the table. The game starts with one randomlydrawn card placed in the middle of the table, before teams take it in turns to draw questions from the deck and place them somewhere on the scale from zero to infinity. Are there more Lego bricks produced per-second than there were websites in 1992? This game will niggle your…

Designer: Neil Patrick Harris | Publisher: Theory11 From an outsider’s point of view, the board game industry comes across as a largely supportive and non-confrontational one. We don’t hear stories of designers aggressively vying to blow another designer’s latest worker-placement game out of the water with a shiny new take on the genre. I guess it’s just not necessary. But if there was a genre prone to bringing out such competitive attitudes, I’d put money on it being escape room/puzzle games: With such emphasis being placed upon surprise and cleverness, every new escape room game must pursue creativity and uniqueness in a way that sets it apart from the competition. Games like Unlock and Exit: The Game may have laid the foundations for others to build upon, but to really…

Designer: Steven Dast | Publisher: Thunderworks Games It’s gamble o’clock, and everyone’s invited to the party! In Emerald Skulls everyone gets to wager all the time. During your turn you can enjoy pushing your luck with a big stack of dice, trying to claim your share of the prize; but even when it’s not your go, you’re invited to place a bet on the current player and how well they will (or won’t) perform. The aim of the game is to secure the highest proportion of the pool of gears, the preferred goblin currency. You do this by paying some of your gears to roll a number of dice, then placing those dice on the central skull board following some simple rules. The most important of which is that you…

Designer: Uncredited | Publisher: Format Games Karen (n): A modern derogatory term used to describe an entitled person who loudly complains about events or items, often with little or no legitimate justification. They expect the world to be moved to accommodate them regardless of cost, the effect on other people, and, on occasion, the laws of physics. In this ludicrous party game, everyone starts with a five-star review, and this is wholly unacceptable. You are aiming to lose four of your star ratings to be the first to reach the ultimate one-star review status. Each point you get makes one of your Karens a little grumpier, five grumpy Karens loses you a star. There are three different types of rounds: What’s Being Reviewed, Fill in the Blanks, and Write the…

Designer: Jon Perry | Publisher: CMYK Some games reward strategic thinking and careful planning. Then there’s other games, like CMYK’s Hot Streak, which compel incessant hollering and raucous laughter. This is an exercise with little strategic consideration, one which instead elicits smart gambits and reckless betting. It’s part event and part comedic relief from the bean counting of more sophisticated games. If nothing else, it’s unusual. The first thing to note with Hot Streak is the product itself. It’s ridiculous. The box is a rectangular case with a transparent window showing four mascots. These portray people in suits, represented by full-colour miniatures that betray their purpose with little beady eyes protruding from their masks. Inside the top lid are the colourful cards, paper money and rules. It may take you…

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Designer: Bryan Bornmueller | Publisher: Office Dog Games Tolkien’s intention, with The Lord of the Rings, was to create a mythology centred largely around Britain and, from his perspective as a wealthy, white man in the mid 20th century, British values. While there are very valid criticisms of some of that narrative from our perspective today, it is impossible to ignore the impact that he had on fantasy literature and lore, and indeed, it has become a universe all its own. The best thing about myths and legends, especially those with a fantasy lilt to them, is that they can be retold and remade again and again. Different mediums and lenses can be applied, and they can grow and change in the retelling, sometimes for the worse, but very often…

Designer: Caezar Al-Jassar, Simon Milburn | Publisher: Alley Cat Games Cats and tabletop gaming just seem to go together. Which is great for the cat lovers among us, but it’s even better when we get a game on our desk that is a cat game based on a cat game that we reviewed some years back. Pusheen fans rejoice, there is a game for you! Pusheen: The Stacking Game is a super simple game in a really pleasing tin. You’ve got a selection of pieces with different Pusheen franchise creatures on them, and each turn you draw a card which has them stacked in a specific way. Every player then attempts to create the structure, which is easier said than done when you’re trying to balance small pieces faster than…

Designer: Daryl Chow | Publisher: Origame You know how it is, you drive into a multi-storey, ready for a day of fun at the Board Games World Fair, and you circle and circle the many floors of cars, looking for that elusive, welcoming space. But no, as you find yourself at the very top, you realise to your dismay that you have arrived too late and there is nary a spot left. Now you’ll have to find an on-street space, or worse, go back to the park-and-ride three miles away and get the bus in! If only you were the manager of the car park, you’d find a way to fit the cars in much more efficiently, wouldn’t you? And you’d also park them by colour, because if you’re going…

Designer: Antoine Lefebvre | Publisher: Randolph When it comes to old-school, pack-of-card games, only poker has maintained an unshakable place in the mainstream – the rest are often lumped together as something your granny would play on a wet Sunday afternoon in August. It’s an unfair characterisation. Sure, other traditional card games lack the highstakes glamour and thrill of poker, but many still have enough oomph to be relevant and deserve half a chance. The rummy family is one, particularly Gin Rummy – which first became a hit well over 80 years ago in the 1940s. Romi Rami is an attempt to breathe new life into a somewhat dusty and overlooked classic. Aside from a few cute illustrative twists on suits to appeal to kids (grapes and clovers replacing spades…

Designer: Bryan Burgoyne | Publisher: Randolph Seaside is a small, set collecting game, where you’ll pull a token from the bag, decide which of the two sides you want to play, and take the action dictated by the token. If it’s a blue design, that’s blue for the sea, you throw it in the sea, and take another turn until you take a white token, for the sand. Pulling and utilising different tokens lets you do different things, and there’s a little push your luck mixed in for good measure. Hopefully, if you’ve played your tokens right, you’ll end up with the highest number of tokens at the end and you’ll be declared the winner. Easy enough, right? It’s quaint, it’s cute and… well, it took me a while to fall…

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 repurposed for Oink Games’ Tiger & Dragon, I knew I had to play it! Loosely based on another traditional East Asian game, Goita, Tiger & Dragon gives…

Designer: Stefan Feld, Susanne Feld | Publisher: Ravensburger Take a look at the age rating for a moment – that’s right folks, this is aimed at five-year-olds and up. Now, if you’ve ever played board games with a five-year-old, you’ll know that some are more concerned with trying to eat the meeples, rather than actually playing. So, can Stefan and Susanne Feld pull off the impossible and make a half-decent game for kids? Well… yes! In Sandcastles, you’re attempting to decorate your village in preparation for a visit by Queen Crab and her royal animals (an octopus, an otter and a puffin), who are all represented by charming little meeples. In fact, the whole game looks totally gorgeous, thanks to some beautiful and bright illustrations. By decorating your village before…

Designer: Cole Wehrle | Publisher: Leder Games Alot of space has been packed into this small box. Arcs is the latest offering from esteemed publisher Leder Games, whose previous titles, Root and Oath, became cult favourites for their quirky takes on classic genre tropes. On paper, at least, Arcs appears to be more regulated. It’s a space combat game with resource management and expansionism and the goal is to reach a victory point threshold before your opponents. This is achieved through a series of straightforward actions: building and moving ships, dice-based combat, constructing settlements, acquiring upgrades and taxing cities for resources. The secret sauce is that this action selection system is wrapped up in a trick-taking procedure – on any given round of turns, your choice of actions will be…

Designers: Fabio Lopiano, Mandela Fernández-Grandon | Publisher: Osprey Games It’s time to relive the foundation of the Inca Empire and follow in the footsteps of the Ayar, the children of the sun and moon gods, whose story plays a part in the foundation myth of the renowned South American civilisation. Ayar: Children of the Sun is a beautifully illustrated Eurogame in which players take simple actions in an effort to balance strategically complex scoring opportunities. Along the way, they'll be gaining two parallel types of points, only the lowest of which determines the outcome of the game. The board consists of four tracks, along each of which travels an Ayar piece that can be moved, stepping across action spaces which then become available to use. On your turn, simply choose…

Designer: Hisashi Hayashi | Publisher: Pegasus Spiele Bomb Busters was one of the most talked-about titles at 2024’s Essen, without even being new. A do-over of the Japanese game Bomb Squad – recut with additional missions and components – is this remake even more explosive than the original? The aim of this cooperative game is simple: defuse bombs by ‘cutting’ matching pairs of numbered blue wires, while avoiding gameshortening yellow wires and gameending red ones. Each mission has a different set-up and corresponding set of rules, but largely all follow the same format: players take turns picking a numbered wire from their own set and then trying to find a match with their teammates. Communication is largely forbidden, with only the active bomb-disposal agent permitted to talk, and even then, information…

Designer: Stefan Feld | Publisher: Deep Print Games, Pegasus Spiele I have to admit, I approached Civolution with a certain amount of dread. Heavier Eurogames are not always my bag. From the box, Civolution looks like the cover of an educational Nintendo DS Game spliced with a scientific conference poster. Laid out, it’s a vast array of pictograms, tiny wooden markers and progress tracks. The creation of some mad Eurogame scientist. And yet, something about this game got its hooks into me. The sheer number of options is absolutely overwhelming, but once you overcome the admittedly lengthy teach, the turn-to-turn loop is simple. Opening out before you is a huge sandbox of actions, strategies and mechanics to tinker with. What is Civolution about? Well in theory each player is a…

Designers: David Thompson, Trevor Benjamin | Publisher: Osprey Games Asequel to 2023’s General Orders: WWII, which was set in 20th century Europe, sees the compact wargame brought to 16th century Japan in General Orders: Sengoku Jidai. The game skirts a line between a territory-control wargame and a worker-placement action economy game, pitting two players head-tohead in a battle to supply the most point-scoring territories by the end of four rounds (about 30 minutes). Turns are very simple. Place one of your Commander tokens onto the board and carry out the action on the printed space. This could be a movement action, letting you pile in troops or boats from anywhere on the board that you connect to, reorganising your army to where you need them to be; or some kind…

Designers: Andrzej Betkiewicz, Kamil ‘Sanex’ Ciesla, Wojciech Frelich | Publisher: Awaken Realms You've probably heard of Pokémon. Maybe you know it as a cartoon, where 10-year-old Ash Ketchum and his Pokémon pal Pikachu were going on all sorts of adventures that made you wonder what his parents were thinking. Or maybe you remember people running with their phones out because a rare Pokémon suddenly spawned on the street corner during the craze of Pokémon Go. Or maybe you even played the Pokémon TCG, collecting cards in booster packs and battling other players. The success and longevity of this IP have inspired many others to try and build on the catchy ‘collect all monsters’ formula, including board game publisher Awaken Realms, who created their own Pokémon-like with the one-to-two-player campaign…

Designer: Reiner Knizia | Publisher: PHALANX Two words that don’t usually go together are ‘prolific’ and ‘consistent’, yet both apply to veteran designer Reiner Knizia. One reason is that his best titles are forever getting rethemed and renamed – thus Wildlife Safari is also Quandary, Botswana and Loco! Another is that he’s not above recycling mechanics that work, perhaps tweaking one aspect to see what changes – as My Island takes the legacy tile placement of My City, but switches it from a square grid to hexes. HUANG typifies both these trends in Knizia’s oeuvre, being a remastered version of 2018’s Yellow & Yangtze, which itself was a twist on the core gameplay of his 1997 title Tigris & Euphrates. In fact, the difference between HUANG and Tigris & Euphrates…

Designer: Florian Fay | Publisher: Sorry We Are French Following on from In The Footsteps of Darwin, this new game focuses on the Polish and naturalized-French physicist and chemist Marie Curie. It feels like the start of a long, ongoing series. The scientific theme is evident throughout the game, but is 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 get through the whole game learning nothing more than the word “flask”, if you choose. But if science or general knowledge is your thing, the in-game concepts you can engage with are backed up with a gorgeous 11-page appendix on the life of…

Designers: Antoine Bauza, Bruno Cathala | Publisher: Repos Production What’s better than a beloved game that has been condensed down into a fun and tense, two-player experience which can be learnt in 15 minutes and takes less than an hour to play? Why, the same game with a nice chunky bit of IP spread across it of course! Seven Wonders beget Seven Wonders: Duel and that quickly lead to this Tolkeinised version. It’s not quite the same game, and the additions do a good job of pulling in as much of the fantasy franchise as possible. With one player representing the Fellowship (sort of) and the other, the forces of Mordor, they each take turns selecting a card from the oddly precise pattern you make of them for each of…

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 and 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 zero and three. The…

Designers: Charles Chevallier, Laurent Escoffier | Publisher: Gigamic Do you feel powerless to cheeky companies looting your hard-earned wages by hoiking up bills? Try Looot, a game that puts you in control of the pillaging – albeit 10 centuries back in Viking times. Longships await ready to set sail for vulnerable, hexagon-patterned lands (a central communal board), where you’ll place Viking workers who will steal resources – from castles to gold, sheep to trees. Back home, you will populate your fjord (an individual board), by surrounding objective tiles with the relevant resources, becoming a rich jarl, and eventually racking up victory points. This is by no means a complicated game, but it is definitely an efficient one. Each player has 13 Viking workers in total, and because you can only…

Designer: Robin Hegedus | Publisher: Mindclash Games I think it’s safe to assume a game might be tricky when the rulebook has to include a basic version to be used the first few times you play. As well as the game instructions, the rulebook also contains advice and comments from a friendly raven who guides you through your learning experience. I enjoyed being told of the decision that needs to be made in The Prologue: don’t worry, there’s no bad decision here, if you’re paralysed by options, just put one card in front of the other and go. I need a friendly raven in all the games I play. Septima isn’t as complicated as it looks. Yes, it is a game with a lot of components. Yes, it seems daunting.…

Designer: Adam Španě | Publisher: TLAMA Games One of the more overlooked game mechanisms I tend to love involves turn order being predicated on the power of your previous actions. Patchwork, Thebes and Tokaido are great examples of this and we can now add Sneferu to those ranks. Of the three, Sneferu is closest to Patchwork in terms of its gameplay. Despite the nicely realised theme of ancient Greece, this is an unashamedly abstract offering in a relatively small box that you can play in less than an hour. The rules get out of the way fast, leaving you with a pleasantly thinky time-management puzzle to wrap your head around. The main game board pictures the Nile running through its centre with what looks like, and essentially is, a race…

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 peek 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 onto 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…

Designers: Michał Gołab Gołebiowski, Przemek Wojtkowiak | Publisher: Rebel Studio There are very few things in the world nicer than sitting out in a garden, under a shady wooden roof, enraptured by nature. Pergola tries to import that experience to your game table by offering you the opportunity to craft the most relaxing and lavish garden you can imagine. Pergola is a very gentle game of arranging lovely flowers and bugs into a point-scoring tableau. The rules are simple; each turn simply choose one of four available garden tools which each depict two items to add to your garden. Each type of flower and each critter (bees, butterflies and ladybirds) is associated with one or more scoring conditions. Some flowers score for having sets of unique colours, some for being…

Designers: Jérémy Ducret,, Romaric Galonnier | Publisher: La Boîte de Jeu The King of Babylon wants a city to gift to his Queen and it’s down to you to design it. The only problem is he also asked your rival and you’re now locked into an urban planning showdown. The Architects of Amytis is a charming small box game for two players. You’ll take it in turns to add a tile from the market to your 3x3 city board. Each tile features both a building and a colour. Buildings score when they’re placed, typically in relation to what else is on your board. For instance, a market gives points for each other type of building you have in your city. The building abilities are simple and reward some forward planning…

Designers: Tim Eisner, Ben Eisner | Publisher: Druid City Games Tidal Blades 2: Rise of the Unfolders is a big game. The length of its title is rivalled only by its list of components. Don’t be too intimidated, as this is comfortably smack dab in the middle of the campaign dungeon crawl genre. It’s easier to grasp than titles such as Gloomhaven and Kingdom Death: Monster, but requires more effort than Vagrantsong or Kinfire Chronicles. There are so many of these games and it’s difficult to establish an identity among such a crowded field. Tidal Blades 2 seeks individuality through a Pixar-like aesthetic, coupled with an intriguing card system that requires some thought without succumbing to cognitive overload. First off, the setting is certainly joyful. It’s flush with colour and…

Designer: Lauren Bello | Publisher: PostCurious Let’s begin this review by resolving any guesses as to what The Morrison Game Factory is about. It is not about the popular supermarket chain. Besides, it would have an additional ‘s’ in the name if it were. It is not about Jim, lead singer of The Doors and tight-leather-trousers-and-no-top fame. And it is completely unrelated to Van, the dude who sang about moondancing. So just what is the game about? That’s a toughie to answer, what with this being a ‘puzzletale’, but it should suffice to reveal the bare bones: a ‘friend’ discovers an abandoned board game factory. Deep among the decaying paperwork and defunct machinery sits a box on a conveyor belt – freshly printed and untouched. That very same box…

Designer: Rob Daviau | Publisher: Restoration Games The Unmatched series of skirmish games have been around for a while now – 20 sets and counting since 2019 – but Restoration Games is showing no signs of slowing down. Admittedly, some recent sets have taken the (rather predictable) Marvel route, but the battlegrounds of the Unmatched game system are still host to heroes both unexpected and intriguing. Slings and Arrows is a testament to this, opening the curtains for Shakespeare and his creations to add some violent theatrics to the game. Shakespeare himself is the head honcho here – his deck was a winning entry at a design competition – and he is a fine example of how the Unmatched designers continue to demonstrate innovation within the game system. Along with…

Designer: Antonello Lotronto | Publisher: DV Games Just one more thing, where were you last games night and why weren’t you playing Alibi with us? Alibi: 3 Intricate Mysteries contains three stories which each see up to five players take on the role of someone involved in a deadly mystery. The catch? One of you was the culprit all along. The bigger catch? You won’t know yourself until the very conclusion. I’d like to keep this review as spoiler-free as possible, as if you like this kind of game, it’s better to go in not knowing too much, so I really don’t want to spoil anything. Alibi is played over a handful of acts, during which you will learn about the details of the events that led up to whatever…

Designer: Hazel Reynolds | Publisher: Gamely Games How would you describe something in two words only? Because of course, it sounds pretty easy, but add in a countdown and a potentially unfamiliar topic and it’s suddenly a bit more frantic. That’s where you find the fun in Clues in Twos, a super-light, party-style game that has you trying to guess the answer to the clues a teammate has given, but from only two-word clues. To play, everyone draws a card and picks which of the two options they want to guess from it. They write it down, and pass the card and their written sheet on to a different player. The timer is set for 90 seconds, the card is flipped, and everyone has to frantically scribble down two-word clues…

Designers: Justus Meyer, Andrew Meyer | Publisher: Doomlings LLC In 2025, it’s far too easy to think that the end of the world is right around the corner. Doomlings provides some gentle comic relief from that, as we work to build a species that could survive the inevitable disasters bubbling up all around us. As a family-friendly table-laying card game, Doomlings is easy to pick up. You begin with a hand of cards and a Gene Pool number. Each turn, you place down a card into your “trait pile”; these are characteristics that your species gain; such as “Sweat” (gain a point, but have a sweaty, moist card fall out of your hand) or “Fecundity” (increases the size of your Gene Pool). Trait cards can have three aspects: a value,…

Designer: Michael Xuereb | Publisher: Brotherwise Games Dungeon Kart is as close to Mario Kart: The Board Game as you can get without actually shelling out big dough for the licence. All of the characters are swapped out for the cast of Brotherwise Games’ Boss Monster, but the tone is spot on, and the gameplay contains all of the turmoil and zany racing the Nintendo property is known for. In terms of complexity, this is on the lighter end, boasting just a few more rules than peers such as Heat: Pedal to the Metal or Formula Dé. The increased rules density is a result of the clever action point system employed and the various manoeuvres it affords. The goal, of course, is very simple: complete one lap around the track…

Designer: Marcus Carleson | Publisher: Jumbo Hitster is a super fun music trivia game where the main goal is to correctly order songs chronologically (from oldest to newest) on your own timeline. The goal is to be the first player to collect 10 music cards by getting the songs in the right order, crowning you as the winner – aka, the Hitster. Hitster: Guilty Pleasures is a standalone version of the original game, with a cheesier selection of music to place – you’ll almost certainly be embarrassed by how many songs you know! Its cards can also be added to the original to create a super-sized set. To play, each player (or team, which was our preferred option) gets one music card, placing it face-up in front of them to…

Designer: Matthew Inman | Publisher: Exploding Kittens I was nervous about reviewing this game. For me, like many, Cards Against Humanity was a rite of passage that brought friends together long before we’d discovered the extent of modern gaming, but it’s not a time in my life I’m looking to hark back to. Add to that, my go to party gaming group is my family. Against all odds, Horrible Therapist made it to the dinner table. We gave a quick trigger warning speech, unwrapped one pack of cards, and quickly put it back in the bag it came in. No, mum, I don’t think you’d like this game. After that, I wasn’t sure how to broach the topic with the group at the local gaming cafe’s social night. They’re an…

Designer: Karl Lange | Publisher: Sit Down! Occasionally trying to engage the kids to play a game can be a chore. After all, you’re competing with seemingly endless Minecraft videos on YouTube, opening fake packs of football cards on FC26 or even (shudder) going outside. However, sometimes a tabletop game will have a hook that’s so compelling the TV remote or games controller goes straight out the window. In the case of Octocube the temptation for youngsters is… the magic of magnets! Admit it, now even you’re intrigued. In Octocube you’re an octopus scouring the sea bed for valuable objects (diamonds, pearls, sextants, amphora and starfish) left behind by pesky humans. The starfish is an odd one – but we’ll let that slide. Anyway, your octopus is represented by a…

Designer: Matúš Kotry | Publisher: Czech Games Edition The app-driven Alchemists board game proved a big hit for publisher Czech Games Edition back in 2014, and it still sits comfortably inside the Board Game Geek Top 200 games of all time. Despite its cartoony artwork and light theme, its gameplay was surprisingly complex. This makes it all the more surprising that, a decade later, a child-friendly follow up has found its way onto the shelves. Little Alchemists shares the same fantasy theme, art style and general feel of its older brother. Once you’ve downloaded the (compulsory but thankfully free) app for Apple or Android, players take turns choosing two ingredients (tiles), scan them with the app to see what colour potion they make, and record the result on their tracker. Customers…

Designers: Uri Streigold, Liat Waks, Naama Weiss | Publisher: Blue Orange Games That’s an interesting looking game, we thought. Those pillows look a bit like bean bags, like they might need to be chucked at someone. Well, this is a book you absolutely can judge by its cover. One of those games that plays almost exactly how you’d expect it to when you first look at it. Yes, you really do get to throw pillows at each other. What you might underestimate is just how much fun it is to have missiles whizzing across the table in this wonderfully coordinated royal pillow fight. Pilo Pilo is a simple little game with circular cards reminiscent of Dobble. The cards include Attacking Knights, Defensive Knights, Sleepy Dragons and the Silent King. The…

Designers: David Carmona, Karen Nguyen | Publisher: Unfriendly Games Nekojima, I found out in the course of this review, basically means Cat Island. It turns out that in Japan, there are islands with a significant population of stray cats. On one such island – Aoshima – the internet suggests there are only four people that live there with 80 cats. I don’t mention this to manifest that a house there will appear on RightMove, but because I’ve played the game Nekojima, and I didn’t realise the folly of trying to build power poles around mischievous native cats was a genuine thing. Score one for educational board games! The game Nekojima is a dexterity based game, where the circular board is divided into four colours. You roll dice to get two…

Designer: Paul Stapleton | Publisher: Bedsit Games In Paupers’ Ladder, designer Paul Stapleton has created more than a game. He’s brought to life a whole world players can jump into and immerse themselves in. This new second edition has added cards, more birds to choose from, and a solo mode. The smallest meeples I’ve ever encountered were in the strategic Euro-style gameYokohama. I’m pleased to say, Paupers’ Ladder Second Edition is so far winning the largest wooden meeples. Each hefty pauper meeple has a bird companion meeple of a similar weighty size. The mission is to leave your home town accompanied only by your friendly, as yet untrained bird, in search of virtue. The first player to master three virtues is the winner. Turns out, there are so many opportunities…

Designer: Julian Courtland-Smith | Publisher: Zygomatic Sometimes, the artwork of a game really telegraphs what to expect. Survive the Island has a dramatic, explosive, edge-of-the-seat, animation style that looks tense, fun and a little silly, with only minor levels of threat. It does an excellent job of conveying what it feels like to play this family friendly, anything-but-cosy adventure game. Previously released in 1982 in a different incarnation (Survive: Escape from Atlantis!), this new game changes a few of the rules and updates the look and feel. By and large it plays the same way, as the island rapidly succumbs to the ocean, tile by tile. Players score points at the end of the game by getting their meeples into the rafts and to safety. But this is no Forbidden…

Designer: Paul Stapleton | Publisher: Bedsit Games This is my second foray into Paul Stapleton’s Brighthelm world. In my Pauper’s Ladder review (see p42), you’ll witness me falling in love in real-time. When you take your first steps into Brighthelm, it doesn’t matter which game you get to first. They don’t tell the same story, and you don’t need any prior knowledge for either. They do take place in the same timeless, vivid, madcap world that you absolutely want to get lost in. You’ll hold in your hands a tiny purple tin with an idyllic scene of a seaside town. There can’t be much in here, you think, it’s tiny. Fast forward 15 minutes and you find yourself digging in the scrapyard for the materials you need to craft yourself…

Designer: Henry Lewis | Publisher: The Mystery Agency Ltd. Escape room board games have tried every trick in the box to replicate the physical actions of players being stuck in the same space together and needing to solve puzzles to escape. From hi-tech solutions (like the use of AR technology in Batman-themed The Arkham Asylum Files: Panic in Gotham City) to three-dimensional puzzles (like exploring a house with a flashlight for clues in Mystery House: Adventures in a Box), the escape room genre seemed to have utilised every gimmick. This is why it can be a palette cleanser to be presented with a simple game box that contains more conventional puzzles: a secret padlock number combination, a set of clues in a newspaper article, or a mystery hidden in a…

Designer: Maxime Rambourg | Publisher: Studio H Looks like it’s a monster mash, and you’ve been drafted in to help. The box art for Vampire Village shows a classic depiction of a Nosferatu-like vampire, standing menacingly over a sleepy Germanic village – and by the end of the game, you might want to stand menacingly over your friends too! In Vampire Village, players pick-and-pass draft tiles, which are then assembled into a town, placing villagers within its walls to score points at the end of the game. Each tile placed may spawn several villagers based on simple conditions, or let you add a hero to the town, who moves villagers to places which may be safer from the horrors outside. Tiles also have directional shields, each of which repels a…

Designer: Cole Werhle | Publisher: Leder Games It’s rare for a game to truly have an “essential” expansion, but I think Leaders & Lore might be just that. This is a collection of cards to add into the base game of Arcs: Conflict and Collapse in the Reach, which dramatically bolsters the existing set of Leader abilities and Lore powers that can be used to add a layer of much-needed spice to a normal play session of Arcs. When using this set, Arcs plays much the same. There’s the tricktaking for action selection, the dynamic objectives through the ambitions system and gathering your entire army against a squad of opposing spaceships and rolling a big pile of combat dice. It’s all still here. This expansion adds a set of variable…

Designer: Michael Kiesling | Publisher: Next Move Games You should never judge a board game by its cover. That’s how it goes, right? And we’re very good at that, despite board games being mostly beautiful anyway. We didn’t mind buying a bird game when we didn’t like birds, nor feel like a haven of gloom was a reason not to play. But… we do form opinions quickly, and our expectations are raised when it’s not just a new Azul game (a rare game my partner will willingly play with me), but also a Duel game (the other kind of game my partner will willingly play with me). Considering the Duel games before it, and the love for Azul – it should be a slam dunk. Azul Duel feels like another…

Designers: Uwe Rosenberg, Tido Lorenz | Publisher: Feuerland Cards on the table: Uwe Rosenberg is my favourite designer. While I’m always excited to try a new game with his name on the box – in this case co-designed with Tido Lorenz – the flipside is my expectations are higher. He often reuses and refines mechanics, meaning that many of his titles feel more like remixes or updates than brand-new designs. So it is with Black Forest, which borrows substantially from his 2013 game Glass Road, introducing a big central map that governs players’ actions through worker placement. You take the role of glass makers hacking down trees for charcoal, gathering sand, water, wood, meat and – delightfully – porridge, to render into glass and provisions. Thus, you wander from village…

Designers: Bruno Cathala, Ludovic Maublanc | Publisher: Open Sesame Games After 16 years, Cyclades, a game of divine auctions and mythical area control has returned. The same legend, retold for a new generation. As one of the longest serving games in my collection, Cyclades holds a fond place in my heart. The bold art design, the hoarding of chunky cardboard coins and the pushing about of charmingly wonky miniatures. All of this areacontrol action is driven by a lean auction system. The platonic ideal of everything that excited me about games when I first got into the hobby. So how does this new edition fare? Does Cyclades still live up to its legend? The aim of Cyclades is to control three Metropolis tiles (up from two in the previous…

Designers: Brian Kirk, Daniel Greiner, Mike Mulvihill | Publisher: Ravensburger Aquick admission. We’re a big Disney household. Mickey Mouse pyjamas. Disney Halloween decorations. A ridiculous amount of Lorcana cards. Stitch waffle maker. Trips to the parks. You name it, we’ve likely got Mickey Mouse on it. As a result, we’ve picked up numerous Disney-themed board games, including the original Villainous. However, despite repeated attempts, the original just bounced off the kids. It went on too long, there’s too much nuance between the characters, etc. So, does this reimagined Villainous finally open up a Whole New World of gaming? Or is it more like the Snow White live-action remake? There are some similarities with the original, of course. You play as one of four villains (Hades, Maleficent, Scar and Ursula) and…

Designer: Grégory Grard | Publisher: Scorpion Masqué Aplastic 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 don't always do that? 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” and…

Designer: Johannes Krenner, Alexander Pfister | Publisher: Lookout Games El Paso seems to serve as a lower complexity version of the classic original Great Western Trail, so the core mechanics will be familiar to those who’ve played any of the prior versions. Each player has a small deck of cow cards containing a range of breeds. Your goal is to navigate around the board, manipulating your hand such that when you reach the El Paso space, you can reveal as many different breeds as possible, earning you points and the opportunity to upgrade your player abilities. Actions include discarding cows for money, buying new breeds for your deck and constructing new tiles to place onto the board. Adding spaces to the route gives you access to more actions in future…

Designers: S J Macdonald, Shem Phillips | Publisher: Garphill Games We’ve come a long way in this trilogy, along the Tigris, but it’s finally time to take the world’s knowledge and put it to good use, designing waterpowered bookshelves and rotating eyeglasses. Inventors of the South Tigris is the third title in Garphill Game’s South Tigris trilogy, and this is the most complex one yet. Inventors is about designing, building, testing and publishing some wild inventions, collectively moving each invention through its lifecycle, capitalising on each step as an opportunity to gain royalties or improve your workers. There’s too much to summarise in a short review, but the game plays out over four rounds, and on your turn you use one of your three types of resource piece (dice, worker…

Designers: 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 and move game, but let’s not rush to judgement too quickly here.…

Designer: Hugo Frénoy | Publisher: Studio H Charge forward! But not too fast, there’s enemy agents everywhere. Leaders is a stylish two-player head-to-head strategy game in which your gameplan has to change every time. Each player initially controls a single piece, their leader, on a desolate, white hexagonal board. Each turn, players first move or activate their characters, trying to position themselves towards victory, before adding a new agent to the board from the selection available. Each non-leader agent is a unique character with a special ability or rule that only you can use, so after a few turns, each player’s squad is vastly different. Instead of moving a single space, some pieces can jump, some can drag opponents towards them, and some can even lock down enemy pieces. This…

Designer: Matt Leacock | Publisher: Z-Man Games It starts how all memorable fantasy books should start; with a good map to pore over. Upon opening Fate of the Fellowship’s weighty but not unwieldy box, and letting its rulebook slide upon the table to be dealt with later, we are met with a portion of the game’s glorious map board. Before it’s even unfolded, the memories of Tolkien fans will be jogged by the author’s knack for creating associative place names: Eriador, The Shire, Bree. These are regions occupying the comparatively ‘safe’ Northwestern region of Middle-Earth, and consequently my mind fills with the colours of summer – blue skies and green hobbit-holes – alongside a sprightly earworm courtesy of Howard Shore’s work in Peter Jackson’s cinematic adaptations. Fully unfurling the board,…

Designer: Stanislav Kordonskiy | Publisher: Board & Dice Minos is a sumptuous, brain-burning Euro that embraces rampant mechanical promiscuity, swirling together dice drafting, engine building, resource management, worker placement and area control to create a potent cocktail that will intoxicate some and leave others staggering away from the table, dizzy and nauseous. You lead one of four Minoan clans through the Bronze Age, building farms, cities, military fortifications and ships, developing technology and infrastructure, manoeuvring your warriors to dominate regions and fending off attacks from the sea. Mostly you do this by drafting dice from a pool rolled at the start of each of the four rounds, and placing them in various spaces around the board associated with different actions. Each action has several slots of varying power –…

Designer: J.J. Neville | Publisher: Split Stone Games I first learned of mycorrhizal networks in Peter Wohlleben’s fantastic book, The Hidden Life of Trees. In it, he describes a complex system of communication occurring between plants, fungus and trees, whereby nutrients, water and even information are transmitted through stringy fungal threads beneath the earth. With Mycelia, designer J.J. Neville offers me the opportunity to re-immerse myself in the ‘Wood-Wide-Web’ – this time on the tabletop. Mycelia is a strategic game of area-control and tableau-building, pitting up to four players against one another as fungal networks competing for space and resources. As they race to complete a tableau of five ‘decayed’ mushrooms, players will explore in search of nutrients, placing spores out on tiles, fruiting and decaying mushrooms, discovering new ones,…

Designers: Orlando Sá, André Santos, Alex Herrerías | Publisher: Osprey Games I’ve always had a love for the Disney and PIXAR film Coco. The gorgeous music, the breathtaking visuals and the mesmerising celebration of a crucial cultural event, all ensured that the animated artwork has been cemented in film history. For many (myself included), it was their first true exposure to Día de los Muertos and those families who are remembering their loved ones by building ofrendas with portraits of the deceased, accompanied by offerings of their favourite things. So, when Ofrenda came along, it was hard not to make those comparisons. Luckily, the title more than lives up to those lofty expectations, and takes you far further into the tradition. Simply put, Ofrenda is a visual feast of colours,…

Designer: Tomáš Holek | Publisher: Czech Games Edition I’m always excited for a new Czech Games Edition release as the publisher has proven itself one of the best in the business at everything from components and rulebooks to innovation and pure fun, in genres ranging from party to deep strategic. Better still, this game was designed by promising newcomer Tomáš Holek who has already impressed with Tea Garden (see p125) and Galileo Galilei. What could go wrong? As it happens (spoiler alert), very little. SETI is a beautifully crafted mid-weight Eurogame which nails its ‘search for extraterrestrial life’ theme with aplomb. The components, explanations, iconography and player aids are as good as we’ve come to expect. While it can run long (especially in those first few plays) the game has…

Designer: Tomáš Holek | Publisher: Albi When I started in the tabletop 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 Eurogames has morphed into a smorgasbord of colourful offerings with every possible theme. Tea Garden falls nicely into this category, filling the table with bright colours while delivering a classic point-salad-style Eurogame 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 management elements to get their…

Designers: Corey Konieczka and Josh Beppler | Publisher: Unexpected Games Along time ago on a game shelf far, far away sat a copy of The Mandalorian: Adventures, a cooperative adventure game based on the Star Wars property of the same name. The Mandalorian: Adventures provides a heavily distilled version of the acts of the first series of the popular TV show, depicting the Mandalorian and his friends rescuing and protecting “the child”, an alien life-form whose existence has captured the attention of a lot of powerful people. The game contains a spiral-bound book, the pages of which serve as the map for each mission, while also providing information about mission-specific rules or conditions. From there, each of you selects your favourite character from the show and takes their deck of…

Designer: James Emerson | Publisher: Lucky Duck Games Tranquility: The Ascent was the game that almost didn’t get made. You may know the ins and outs of this – the publisher going out of business, and the designer and artist scrambling to get the game made and to backers regardless. But the game eventually did get made, and that meant we were able to get a copy and decide for ourselves if it had climbed to dizzying heights or was stuck at the bottom of the mountain. Thankfully, it’s fair to say it’s done well. The original Tranquility handed you a large stack of numbered cards, and asked you to place them in order, drawing one at a time in a grid formation. Easy right? Except when you place a…