Contributor
TheCuttlefish
Cares about the box, the insert and the rulebook as much as the game. Has a particular weakness for tidy rules and gleeful take-that.
🎁 2 kudos from readers
238 reviews
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Review SpaceCorp: 2025-2300AD
SpaceCorp with Ventures is a tight, lively full package, and it is notably better at three, where blocking and close scores make every move matter. You may complain before realising how dangerous your company becomes in the final phase; that is part of the pleasure.
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Review Knee Deep in Hexes
Knee Deep in Hexes is an honest, luck-free duel with the urgent economy of a classic resource-rush RTS. The rules are light, but repeat games develop teeth.
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Review Arcs
Arcs improves markedly once the advanced rules, asymmetric alien factions, and their powers enter the picture. It still leaves too much of its balance to the people around the table, but this is no longer an automatic no.
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Review Axis & Allies: Battle of the Bulge
A welcoming wargame trip to the Bulge that does not require a staff college first. It keeps enough historical flavour to matter, enough strategy to invite another try, and enough dice to start arguments.
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Review Lairs
Lairs is a quick, clever two-player game of dungeons, monsters and loot, with no interest in taking itself too seriously. The base box welcomes younger players; any expansion gives the grown-ups a little more bite.
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Review Scarface 1920: Bloody Business
Bloody Business turns Scarface 1920 from a flat area-control game into a sprawling gang war full of pressure, intrigue and gunfire. It takes a long evening, but it finally earns that commitment.
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Review Crisis: 1914
Crisis: 1914 dresses a light push-your-luck game in diplomatic decks, Belle Époque atmosphere and plenty of opportunities to wreck someone else’s plans. It is not as heavy as it looks, but it can become gloriously messy with the right group.
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Review Unmatched Adventures: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Unmatched Adventures: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles turns the familiar confrontation into a cooperative boss fight with smart adjustments and the sort of difficulty that pulls you straight back in. Shredder has already made his point.
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Review Meltwater
Meltwater is an odd, brisk two-player strategy game in which nuclear winter is not backdrop but the clock coming for you. It is less a straight wargame than a nastier contest over who goes hungry first.
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Review The Old King's Crown
The Old King's Crown is a hard, fair asymmetric area-control game that asks the group to learn its factions. Once that knowledge is around the table, its sharp edges become the point.
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Review Angel's Share
Angel's Share is a dry, clean economic game about casks and single malt, where the market becomes the battlefield. It is especially strong with five players.
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Review Black Clover: Star Festival
A light hidden-squad-placement game of magic knights, dice and festival quests. There is a good spark here, but its player interaction does not quite put enough pressure on the table.
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Review Forestry
Forestry is a tight resource-management euro about sustainable logging that does not merely survive at four players; it gets properly dangerous there. Plans remain flexible, the final rounds close in hard, and the margin can genuinely be a single point.
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Review Stone Age
Stone Age shows its age beside newer worker-placement games, yet it remains a clear, competitive game that is easy to pick up. A nine-year-old can understand it — and still make you regret giving them an opening.
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Review Keyside
Keyside gives the Key series a sharp, demanding revival: a dirty euro full of blocking, clashes, and decisions that bite. For groups who enjoy getting in one another’s way, it is one of the year’s stronger games.
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Review Recall
Recall gives you the sweep of a substantial eurociv without demanding an evening of mental ash. At three players it produced a properly tight fight, with several viable ways forward and very little luck steering the result.
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Review Sword & Sorcery: Arcane Portal
Sword & Sorcery: Arcane Portal preserves what made the core box stand out, then sends it into a more poisonous campaign. It needs one experienced person at the table to keep things moving, but pays that effort back in tension and action.
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Review Molly House
Molly House has a distinct voice and the nerve to use it, but it asks everyone at the table to learn its dialect before it can speak. I did not find the effort sufficiently rewarding.
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Review Shackleton Base: A Journey to the Moon
My third visit to Shackleton Base: A Journey to the Moon was the one that finally landed: a substantial heavy euro with some proper elbowing, but without arbitrary punishment. The three corporations in the game matter enormously to how enjoyable the session becomes.
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Review Echoes of Time
Echoes of Time is an odd action-programming game with clever machinery and a sharp appetite for player interference. It is not without interest, but its busy systems and discard locks can make it hard company.
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Review Nemesis: Retaliation
Nemesis: Retaliation still knows how to stage an alien-infested disaster, but its base and safety measures made this outing feel more static than I wanted. The spectacle remains; the pressure did not always arrive with it.
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Review Aldebaran Duel
Aldebaran Duel is a tight, quick two-player tableau builder that fits neatly into the gap after work. It does not reinvent drafting; it knows exactly how to make drafting annoy the person opposite you.
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Review Light Speed: Arena
Light Speed: Arena is a tiny spaceship disaster with a phone camera: throw ships, take a photo, and find out what you destroyed. Often, it is your own base.
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Review Colonial 1700-1800
Colonial 1700-1800 is an odd little pocket wargame with real atmosphere, cards marching across cards, and battles that can wreck a plan on one bad roll. There is substance here, provided you can live with its quirks.
