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 Escape Plan
Escape Plan is a eurogame that tightens the table rather than letting everyone quietly solve their own puzzle. At five players, it gets properly wild.
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Review Mega Civilization
Mega Civilization returned as a vast seven-player table of trade, calamity, and increasingly obvious rivals. We did not finish, but Rome and Greece had already turned the game into their private race.
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Review Underwater Cities
Underwater Cities is plainly excellent, and its three-player game has a sharper edge. Four players works perfectly well; three makes every choice bite harder.
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Review Cthulhu Wars
Cthulhu Wars delivered an honest bloodbath on an odd map, with new factions and plenty of reasons to watch the player beside you. It also demands time, appetite and a close eye on special effects that can tilt a game before it has properly begun.
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Review Patchistory
Patchistory has not yet given me a full game from which to deliver a final verdict, but it already looks like a serious contender for four players. Its scoring balance needs to be tested through the third era.
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Review SiegeStorm: SiegeMode
SiegeStorm: SiegeMode is a fast, aggressive card game with themed decks, satisfying combinations, and a siege that puts movement into the duel. For fans of the genre, it is an easy recommendation.
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Review Forged in Steel
Forged in Steel presents itself as a low-luck city builder, then starts demolishing its neighbours with enthusiasm. It will not make your group closer, but it may give them a memorable evening.
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Review Time of Crisis: The Roman Empire in Turmoil, 235-284 AD
Time of Crisis: The Roman Empire in Turmoil, 235-284 AD is still a cracking game: light GMT by appearance, but perfectly capable of making Rome feel personal. When the dice start performing miracles for the wrong person, the tension needs no introduction.
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Review Trick of the Rails
An interesting trick-taking game with a railway coat of paint, though it takes a little patience before its priorities come into focus. The trains are why I sat down with it; they are not quite why I would return.
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Review Northern Pacific
Northern Pacific is a small, fast game that becomes far more tangled than it looks, especially with a big group around it. It has almost no rules, plenty of player pressure, and perhaps only so much life in it.
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Review Red Light: A Star is Porn
Red Light: A Star is Porn looks like a provocative joke, then reveals enough game beneath the artwork to become a small surprise hit. It is not a landmark design, but it gets the right group laughing and knows when to end.
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Review Conan
Conan brings honest dice, an Overlord who gets to be properly wicked, and a group quite willing to take a beating. It is a loud, grand evening of adventure.
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Review Cryptocurrency
Cryptocurrency is an honest little game, provided you bring the right group. It works noticeably better with four than with three.
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Review Dungeon Derby
Dungeon Derby is loud betting chaos for a group prepared to leave dignity at the door. In the right company, its traps and dice produce stories that outlast the game itself.
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Review Popular Front
Popular Front remains a hard, bruising six-player experience, one that brings history, politics, and everyone’s personalities to the surface. The base game alone is enough to explain its reputation.
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Review Terraforming Mars: Hellas & Elysium
The Hellas map gives Terraforming Mars a welcome change of scenery. For me, though, the tabletop version is still the better way to play because it keeps every opponent’s plans where you can see them.
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Review Raccoon Tycoon
Raccoon Tycoon takes a simple economic premise and gives it teeth with auctions and smart set collection. It is a light gateway game that gets the table watching one another’s money with proper suspicion.
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Review Franchise
Franchise is a lean area-influence game about spreading corporate networks across America, with brisk play and plenty of friction. A return visit also settled the question of whether it has staying power.
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Review Trade on the Tigris
Trade on the Tigris is a pleasant, lighter trading game that still held up on a second outing. A few strategies are beginning to look suspiciously stronger than the rest, though.
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Review Tulip Bubble
Tulip Bubble remains a group favourite after many plays: hard, volatile, and at its best when everyone at the table is watching everyone else. A later game also showed how brutally the deck can tilt the whole affair.
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Review Talon
Talon is quick and tidy on the table, but a one-off battle has little reason to exist. The campaign game is where the system finds its teeth.
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Review Mage Wars Arena: Battlegrounds Domination
Mage Wars Arena: Battlegrounds Domination is not merely a way to add more people to the table. With three mages and a scenario in play, it makes the arena broader, nastier, and far more strategically alive.
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Review Cavum
Cavum is a tight network-builder that turns empty hexes into a demolition site. Blowing up another player's tunnel feels remarkably like good table manners.
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Review AuZtralia
In AuZtralia, the late twist can turn the hunters into the main course with almost no warning.
