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 For What Remains: Out of the Basement
For What Remains: Out of the Basement is a clean solo or head-to-head skirmish game with straightforward rules, proper fighting, and an activation system that keeps the tension in the right place. The line is not cheap, but this box makes a much stronger case for itself than I expected.
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Review Cradle of Civilization
Cradle of Civilization revisits Avalon Hill’s History of the World with a new map, new civilisations, plenty of dice, and a selection phase that lets players make trouble for one another. It is no revolution, but get five or more willing people around it and it can be properly lively.
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Review The Battle of Armageddon: Deluxe Edition
The Battle of Armageddon: Deluxe Edition is a six-sided apocalypse full of nuclear strikes, the Antichrist, and counters vanishing in spectacular fashion. Its problem is that the chaos can remove a player from the game long before the battle is over.
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Review War and Peace: Game of the Napoleonic Wars
War and Peace: Game of the Napoleonic Wars is enormous, but it has the good sense not to throw you straight into the abyss. Its introductory scenarios make a first encounter with this monster feel manageable.
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Review Nemesis: Aftermath & Void Seeders
Nemesis: Aftermath & Void Seeders shifts the horror aboard the USS Nemesis from teeth in the corridor to panic in the mind. I still prefer the base game’s classic aliens, but this ship remains very hard to leave behind.
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Review Fire in the Lake
Fire in the Lake put me off the first time, then won me over completely when I returned through the right scenario. It is a dense, violent, demanding COIN game that pays back experience at the table.
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Review Shards of Infinity
Shards of Infinity takes the familiar deck-building loop and gives it sharper elbows, satisfying combos, and a race that keeps everyone watching the table. Luck is part of the deal, but it is put to very good use.
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Review The Waylanders
The Waylanders has a decent, quick skirmish game buried beneath a rulebook that seems determined to evict you before the first round. It is for committed genre fans, and only at a sensible price.
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Review Keyper
Keyper has a clever worker-placement core built around shared opportunities, but it buries that strength under a draining rulebook and a disappointingly flat scoring finish.
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Review Tiny Towns
Tiny Towns is a neat, clever city-builder that works for children learning shapes and colours, then quietly turns everyone else into a nuisance with a cube in hand.
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Review Obsidia
Obsidia is a strange, dark indie brawler: you build an underworld necropolis, then do your best to turn it into a massacre. It is thematic, brisk, and much funnier once everyone agrees not to take it too seriously.
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Review Curious Cargo
Curious Cargo is a merciless two-player network builder: only a step above filler in length, but far heavier in the head. I loved it; my opponent swore at me, which is probably the honest recommendation.
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Review Lost Ruins of Arnak
Lost Ruins of Arnak is a tidy, appealing blend of deckbuilding and worker placement, though my first plays raised doubts about how much players truly get in each other’s way. Later sessions with Expedition Leaders showed far more staying power than that first impression suggested.
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Review Smartphone Inc.
Smartphone Inc. has far more bite than its simple rules initially suggest. It is a sharp game of reading intentions and spoiling plans, with superb production and an expansion that is essential, if not cheap.
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Review Capital Lux 2: Generations
Capital Lux 2: Generations is a small card game with far more bite than it first appears to have. It teaches in five minutes, finishes within forty, and gets everyone watching for the first player to burn.
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Review Imperial Struggle
Imperial Struggle rewards time, careful rules work and an opponent who prefers a long contest to an immediate throttling. It is substantial and satisfying, but it never quite rose near the top of my own list.
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Review Apocalypse Road
Apocalypse Road takes much of Thunder Alley’s chassis, lightens it, then bolts on guns. This is not merely a race; it is vehicular carnage.
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Review Merv: The Heart of the Silk Road
Merv: The Heart of the Silk Road first reads as an over-tight euro, but at three it becomes a sharper game of watching plans, denying space, and making every cut count.
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Review New Corp Order
New Corp Order is the reliable quick game: easy to bring back to the table and satisfying without claiming the whole evening. This session stayed unusually civil, but it still did the job.
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Review Core Worlds
Core Worlds is an overlooked, substantial deckbuilder with a smooth flow and scoring that feels earned. Galactic Orders is a very worthwhile addition; Revolutions is optional seasoning for groups wanting a little more friction.
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Review Gray Eminence
Gray Eminence is a distinctive, carefully made game of global conspiracies, backed by real research and a pleasingly strange sense of theme. Its execution, however, gets tangled in unclear rules and mechanisms that do not always belong together.
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Review Struggle of Empires
Struggle of Empires is a deluxe reprint built for a noisy table: auctions, wars, alliances, and the betrayal that makes all of them matter. When everyone leans into it, the scores stay brutal and nobody leaves innocent.
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Review Undaunted: North Africa
Undaunted: North Africa brings vehicles to a series I already like a great deal, and its early scenarios suggest there is more to uncover. It has not swept me away yet, but it has certainly kept me at the table.
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Review The Cost
The Cost delivers tight finishes, hard choices, and the pleasing certainty that nobody at the table is there to spare you. Later plays confirm that a clean approach can work, provided you can actually plan it.
