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 The Red Cathedral
The Red Cathedral is a remarkably clean, airy medium euro whose altered rondel makes each choice matter. The contractors expansion is well made, but it moves the game into a noticeably heavier bracket.
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Review The Transcontinental
The Transcontinental does not invent a new mechanism, but it assembles familiar ones with impressive care. At three players, it is a tight economic game that rewards planning and punishes inattention.
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Review Tabannusi: Builders of Ur
Tabannusi: Builders of Ur gives familiar euro machinery an unusually clever linkage, yet it never quite achieves the finished poise of Tascini’s strongest designs. At four players, however, it becomes a substantially more compelling proposition.
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Review Corrosion
Corrosion is a factory-building action-programming game that proved far sharper than its lukewarm word of mouth suggested. It keeps the wait between turns low while giving each choice proper bite.
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Review Lizard Wizard
Lizard Wizard takes Racoon Tycoon’s market engine, gives it lizard mages, and tightens the joins. It is still a breezy market game with enough push-your-luck to resist complete control.
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Review Origins: First Builders
Origins: First Builders is considerably more pleasant than its reputation suggests, though it never becomes an easy recommendation. It is a lighter dice-placement euro with satisfying building chains and a few unusually sharp strategic edges.
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Review Alubari: A Nice Cup of Tea
Alubari: A Nice Cup of Tea is effectively Snowdonia in a slimmer, easier-to-set-up package. Its tea economy adds a worthwhile wrinkle, but it gives up much of the variety that makes the original so replayable.
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Review Core Worlds: Empires
Core Worlds: Empires is a heavy worker-placement game with honest 3X ambitions, minus exploration, and several clever links between its systems. It asks for a full three hours and a group willing to carry that weight, then pays them back with almost no downtime and continual conflict.
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Review 18Chesapeake
18Chesapeake is a lighter 18XX without sacrificing the genre’s necessary disasters. A wildly speculative opening with privates and starting companies made that especially clear.
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Review War Room
War Room is a huge Second World War game that does not hand out easy blitz victories. Give it the room, time and committed group it demands, and its tension more than justifies the footprint.
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Review Squaring Circleville
Squaring Circleville is a spare, abstract urban euro built around a rondel and a relentless pace. It avoids the clutter of newer designs, yet still produces the kind of tense race that makes a Spielworxx title worth the table space.
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Review Commands & Colors: Napoleonics Expansion #6 – EPIC Napoleonics
EPIC Napoleonics gives Commands & Colors: Napoleonics the scale it has always seemed to be reaching for. With the action & tactics decks from Field Marshals and Tacticians, the battle becomes fuller and more tactically consequential.
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Review Maglev Metro
Maglev Metro marries pick-and-deliver, network building and action programming in a notably approachable package. It lacks the polish of Suburbia and the depth of Tramways, yet the base game remains worth investigating.
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Review Furnace
Furnace packs an unusual auction economy and production chains into four brisk rounds. Its central idea is excellent, provided the promo cards stay out of the deck.
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Review Florenza: X Anniversary Edition
Florenza: X Anniversary Edition is an older worker-placement and resource-management design with a tight economy and real room for optimisation. Its fixed market limits variety, but gives repeat groups a satisfying set of pressures to learn and exploit.
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Review Versailles 1919
Versailles 1919 takes the broad frame of Churchill and turns it into a proper negotiation game with a cleaner model of diplomacy. It is much lighter than its box suggests, properly sharp at a full table, and let down chiefly by its ending.
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Review Vampire: The Masquerade – Rivals Expandable Card Game
Vampire: The Masquerade – Rivals Expandable Card Game carries a great deal of Jyhad/VtES DNA into a lighter, more approachable box. That may be an excellent entry point for newcomers, though veterans may find that the simplification removes the part they came for.
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Review Monasterium
Monasterium looks more forbidding than it is: the teach takes a little while, then the structure settles into place. It is a clean tableau builder with meaningful choices and none of the headache its rules initially suggest.
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Review Gùgōng
Gùgōng is a card-drafting worker-placement Euro built around a clever, luck-free action system that demands proper thought. It works unusually well at five, though its restrained drama and runaway-leader issue keep it short of the top tier.
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Review Cooper Island
Cooper Island is a punishing optimisation solitaire dressed for company, and it has not yielded its best lines to us yet. That resistance is very much part of its appeal.
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Review Mini Express
Mini Express distils cube-rail pressure into a brisk, spare game of four companies. It is a very good filler with properly sharp decisions, and no interest in being gentle about them.
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Review Sovereign Skies
Sovereign Skies is a compact rondel race with considerably more thought in it than its first impression suggests. It is a balanced, satisfying forty-minute filler.
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Review Vs System 2PCG: The Marvel Battles
Vs System 2PCG: The Marvel Battles is a properly streamlined rebuild of the old VS, with enough deck construction to reward curiosity without turning into unpaid employment. Its strongest case remains the amount of playable material in the box, with 2v2 looking like its natural high point.
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Review Vast: The Crystal Caverns
Vast: The Crystal Caverns is an asymmetric adventure in which the Knight, Dragon, Goblins, and the Cave itself are pursuing very different games at the same table. The first play teaches balance rather than rules, which is rather more interesting than it sounds.
