Contributor
TheTrainSpotter
A mechanisms obsessive. Never reviews a game in isolation — always reaching for what it borrows, what it refines, and which other titles sit next to it on the shelf.
154 reviews
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Review People Power: Insurgency in the Philippines, 1981-1986
People Power is an unusually approachable, compact entry in the COIN series that retains both pressure and historical weight. Its three-sided contest is legible, tense, and given real depth by its extra systems.
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Review Wayfarers of the South Tigris
Wayfarers of the South Tigris gives Garphill’s new trilogy a dense, satisfying opening built around tableau building and competing lines of progress. A return visit also made its low player interaction impossible to ignore.
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Review Marrakesh
Marrakesh is, for me, Stefan Feld’s most complete design of this period: a dense, generous point salad whose systems genuinely pull on one another.
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Review La Famiglia: The Great Mafia War
La Famiglia: The Great Mafia War is a dense 2v2 area-control design with hidden orders, asymmetric forces and enough mechanical character to stand apart. It is not light, but its complexity is doing real work.
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Review Captain's Sea
Captain's Sea is a carefully grounded Age of Sail dueller that favours seamanship over procedural clutter. It has more depth than Flying Colors’ duelling rules, though it is chiefly for genre veterans who have worn those rules smooth.
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Review Sabika
Sabika is a tight, brain-burning multi-rondel Euro with enough coherence and character to rise above guilty-pleasure status. It does not reinvent the wheel; it puts several wheels on the same chassis and gives each one a job.
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Review Dune: Imperium – Immortality
Immortality is a proper expansion for Dune: Imperium rather than a box of extra material: it sits neatly beside Ix and changes the game’s priorities in meaningful ways. Most importantly, it gives the deck-building side the weight it was asking for.
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Review Mage Noir
Mage Noir initially looks very familiar to anyone who remembers the CCG boom, but its mana system is a real variation on the formula. The central idea is fresh; the basic set around it is less so.
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Review Oh My Goods!
Oh My Goods! packs a credible production chain into a very small card game, and its basic structure is admirably easy to teach. Time has made its limitations clearer, though: it works better as a light introduction for children than as a regular choice for adults.
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Review Crossing Oceans
Crossing Oceans is a cleaner, more legible version of Transatlantic, but not such a radical revision that it displaces the older game. It is an easy recommendation for anyone who does not already own its predecessor.
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Review Dark Ages: Holy Roman Empire
Dark Ages: Holy Roman Empire is an ambitious medieval 4X that takes the genre’s familiar ailments seriously, though it does not cure all of them. With the right group and a shared idea of what sort of game they are playing, its large combined map is remarkably manageable over six hours.
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Review Impression
Impression gives worker placement an unusual two-phase structure, then uses it to power a satisfyingly aggressive engine. Its iconography is so poor, however, that it can spoil a first encounter with an otherwise very worthwhile euro.
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Review Lacrimosa
Lacrimosa gives an unusual subject the structural discipline of a medium-weight Euro, with action selection and deck development speaking the same language. A second play confirmed that the first impression was not a flattering accident.
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Review Space Station Phoenix
Space Station Phoenix builds a confident euro from familiar systems, then gives them real tension through its consumable action spaces. It asks for one teaching game, but repays that investment with unusually clean pacing.
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Review Village Rails
Village Rails is an honest, quick railway filler from Osprey: light on its feet, but dense enough to keep a train-game mind properly occupied.
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Review Terracotta Army
Terracotta Army is a carefully made medium-weight euro, combining worker placement with a light rondel rhythm and little wasted motion. It is not essential collection material, but it is a thoroughly respectable recommendation.
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Review Rise
Rise has a clean action-selection core and a ten-track race with enough interdependence to make its promise immediately legible. It just reaches the finish line feeling as though one final design pass went missing.
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Review Food Chain Magnate: The Ketchup Mechanism & Other Ideas
The Ketchup Mechanism & Other Ideas is not merely more Food Chain Magnate; it is eleven ways of rearranging an already ruthless system. There is immense distance to travel here, provided the modules are curated rather than poured in wholesale.
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Review Verdant
Verdant moves Cascadia’s familiar drafting frame into a house of plants, rooms and ornaments. It is polished and has some bite, but feels rather too safe as the team’s next design.
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Review Carnegie
By its fifth and sixth play, Carnegie’s base game is still producing fresh department combinations and strategic lines. One opening looks suspiciously strong, but it deserves testing rather than a verdict.
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Review The Hunters A.D. 2114
The Hunters A.D. 2114 builds an unusually convincing campaign around strong writing, meaningful pressure and a sprawling tactical infrastructure. Its combat and crafting eventually lose some lustre, and it is badly served by a two-character setup.
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Review Maracaibo
Maracaibo’s expansion brings a few worthwhile refinements, but little that materially changes the familiar equation. The base game remains very good; it may simply breathe better with three than with four.
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Review Heaven & Ale
Heaven & Ale is a stern, honest semi-rondel whose balance only becomes clear with repeat plays. As familiarity grows, its choices sharpen and its blocking starts to matter.
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Review Circadians: Chaos Order
Circadians: Chaos Order takes the risk of asymmetric 3X area control and, unusually for the genre, makes its systems cohere without allowing one faction to run away with the table.
