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 Anunnaki: Dawn of the Gods – Kickstarter Edition
Anunnaki: Dawn of the Gods – Kickstarter Edition arrives in an enormous, rather slapdash box with a rulebook that makes a poor first impression. Then it gets on the table and turns out to be an unexpectedly satisfying collision of private puzzle-solving and divine map warfare.
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Review Planet B
Planet B is a busy eurotrash worker placement game about future-city developers, easy to teach and happy to provoke some table talk. Its wild, Ameritrash scoring will split groups who regard the final count as sacred.
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Review Vs. System 2PCG: AEW
Vs. System 2PCG: AEW is a straightforward standalone entry point to the system, even if its wrestling theme does not generate much heat on its own. The Boys offers more texture, while The Marvel Battles remains where the system really starts throwing punches.
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Review Rats of Wistar
Rats of Wistar dresses a heavy, moving-parts worker-placement game in a charming rodent theme. Its routes to victory are plentiful, but the patience it demands was not always repaid.
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Review 7th Sea: City of Five Sails
7th Sea: City of Five Sails is a demanding LCG that takes patience before it starts paying you back. A few deckbuilding experiments and five plays in, its appeal is becoming clear.
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Review Twilight Inscription
Twilight Inscription is a symbol-heavy roll-and-write whose first play can feel like learning under fire. It is not my genre, but I can plainly see why it sits near the top of it.
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Review Keydom's Dragons
Keydom's Dragons turns hidden-strength worker placement into noise, bluffing and cheerful betrayal. With five or more players and the right group, it is far lighter than fans of the Key line may expect.
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Review Guns & Steel
Guns & Steel is a minimalist half-hour civilisation game with a surprising amount of thought packed into its small frame. At three players, it makes an excellent sharp little companion for coffee or a gamers’ holiday.
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Review Border Reivers: Anglo-Scottish Border Raids, 1513-1603
Border Reivers is a very simple, solemn-faced cattle-rustling game that finds its pleasure in a noisy table. It works well with four; with six, the raids should properly get out of hand.
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Review Solar 175
Solar 175 got me with its theme and its promise of a legacy campaign, despite the publisher’s patchy record. Two scenarios in, I am still curious rather than convinced.
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Review For Glory
For Glory is an honest, easy-to-teach gladiator deck-builder that knows when to stop shuffling cards and let the arena do the talking. The base game makes a sharper two-player contest; the expansion turns the whole table into a cheerful mess.
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Review Nemesis: Lockdown
Nemesis: Lockdown is smoother than the original and less likely to kill you before the evening has found its feet. It still has the larks, but its scaling and the Visitors leave it a step behind the first Nemesis.
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Review Darkest Dungeon: The Board Game
A faithful, flavour-soaked version of Darkest Dungeon that makes combat feel rather gentler than it should. Its real enemy is the campaign’s punishing amount of setup and packing away.
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Review Scarface 1920
Scarface 1920 is a lavish gangster sandbox that hides far more Ameritrash chaos beneath its engine-building costume than you might expect. It has some rough edges and an abrupt finish, but the right table can get a great evening out of it.
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Review Mage Wars Arena
Mage Wars Arena came back to the table after a long absence and promptly reminded me why I still love it, excesses and all. Give the decks a little care and its duels still have real teeth.
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Review Hegemony: Lead Your Class to Victory
Hegemony: Lead Your Class to Victory makes players defend class interests, push policy, and watch one another carefully. It is a very respectable game, though card draw can leave a carefully planned strategy waiting for its tools.
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Review Excavation Earth
Excavation Earth pairs action programming with market manipulation in an honest, burny game that seems to have slipped under more tables than it deserved to. It never quite finds a blazing finish, but it gives you good reasons to come back.
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Review Europa Universalis: The Price of Power
Europa Universalis: The Price of Power is a dense historical game that demands not just time, but a group willing to learn it together. Its rules are heavy, yet remarkably willing to meet you halfway.
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Review The King's Dilemma
The King's Dilemma is a terrific legacy story wrapped around a voting game that too often forgets to be a game. It creates memorable table politics, then regularly takes the steering wheel away from the players.
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Review The Silver River
The Silver River is an honest, generously stocked euro that wakes up when players stop being polite. Conflict is not an unfortunate side effect here; it is the seasoning the game needs.
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Review Stationfall
Stationfall is a space-station panic game of secret identities, leverage and very deliberate nastiness, built around a superb character system and burdened with manuals that do not especially wish to meet you halfway. Once it clicks, the station becomes a wonderfully volatile place to ruin somebody’s plans.
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Review Angel Fury
Angel Fury is a relaxed, near-symmetrical take-and-hold brawl of angels, demons, dice, and repeated violence. It is not a game to take terribly seriously, but it makes a very agreeable hour of it.
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Review Woodcraft
Woodcraft has a wonderfully ambitious central wheel and all the hallmarks of a strong Suchy release. At four players, though, the waiting and the card randomness kept me at arm’s length.
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Review 1861: Railways of the Russian Empire & 1867: Railways of Canada
This game of 1861: Railways of the Russian Empire & 1867: Railways of Canada stayed sharp, but the people around it did not. It came down to $98, and a little sporting mercy made the tension better rather than softer.
