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 Iberian Rails
Iberian Rails is an honest cube rail with an unusually lively approach to funding companies and running auctions, even if its track building carries less of the design. I would happily bring it back for Taiwan and the other character sets.
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Review All Bridges Burning: Red Revolt and White Guard in Finland, 1917-1918
All Bridges Burning is a remarkably dense COIN game: small on the table, demanding in the decisions it asks for, and serious about its Finnish Civil War setting. It is not a sensible entry point to the series, but it rewards an experienced four-player group handsomely.
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Review Ora et Labora
Ora et Labora earns its reputation as one of the stronger works in its field: water, production, and an economy with several layers to uncover. Early games feel open; its sharper edge arrives once everyone can see what the others are setting up.
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Review Rise to Nobility
Rise to Nobility is a full-bodied, likeable dice-placement euro, and a clear step up from its creators’ Cavern Tavern. The base game can suffer from a runaway leader, but the box also contains credible ways to address it.
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Review Pacific Rails Inc.
Pacific Rails Inc. combines worker placement and track laying with unusual confidence, and does so at a pace and length that feel properly judged. Its map, however, never quite cashes the promise of its central idea.
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Review Craftsmen
Craftsmen has been punished by its reputation more than it deserves, though that does not make it a lost masterpiece. Beneath an awkward teach sits a coherent, demanding production game; once the friction is gone, so is some of its mystery.
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Review Guild Master
Guild Master is a light dice game with a worthwhile action-selection twist and simultaneous resolution. It is far from essential, but it has a sensible place on a more relaxed game night.
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Review Tekhenu: Obelisk of the Sun
Tekhenu: Obelisk of the Sun is a dense dice-placement point salad: thematically adjacent to Teotihuacan, but far more demanding in the optimisation it expects. One play is not enough for a final ruling, though the design has already shown its teeth.
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Review The Grand Trunk Journey
The Grand Trunk Journey is an honest Pick and Deliver design with worthwhile hand management and a small deckbuilding layer. It is dry, occasionally tiring, and oddly paced, but its central system makes it a train game I rather enjoy.
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Review Expedition to Newdale
Expedition to Newdale first presents itself as a rather colourless light Pfister, but its campaign becomes more convincing once the scenarios begin changing the map and the job in meaningful ways. It is not among his classics, yet it has considerably more replay value than its introductory game suggests.
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Review Pandoria
Pandoria is a brisk, tidy tile-placement game with a sound little economy between building for later and scoring now. It does not reinvent anything, but it also has no interest in wasting your evening.
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Review TOKYO TSUKIJI MARKET
TOKYO TSUKIJI MARKET is a ruthless, luckless economic game with the peculiar logic one expects from the Draper line. It needs repeat plays before its market language becomes legible, but players who want prices to be made by people rather than a deck should make time for it.
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Review Europe Divided
Europe Divided initially looks like TS-Light, but its visible-objective structure gives it a distinct identity. It is a compact asymmetric two-player design with a great deal of thought packed into roughly 90 minutes.
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Review Clinic: Deluxe Edition
Clinic: Deluxe Edition is a dense economic sandbox from viard which looks far more alarming in the rulebook than it does once play begins. It punishes mistakes, makes risk necessary for victory, and rewards patience more than immediate charm.
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Review Dominations: Road to Civilization
Dominations: Road to Civilization hides a surprisingly demanding abstract civilisation game beneath its triangular dominoes. It is not entirely tidy, but its engine-building has the same persistent pull as Terraforming Mars.
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Review Card City XL
Card City XL packs a demanding city-building puzzle into 20–30 minutes. Its premise is simple; learning which scenario suits a particular group takes some proper play.
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Review Eclipse: New Dawn for the Galaxy
Eclipse: New Dawn for the Galaxy is still a remarkably strong 4X design, provided its exploration does not pick a loser before the game has properly begun. When the opening conditions cooperate, its research and upgrade combinations are superb.
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Review Navegador
Navegador is a dry, intelligent German euro with several routes to victory and a clear family resemblance to Hamburgum. It is soundly built, but it does not quite match its sibling for me.
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Review The Rich and the Good
The Rich and the Good is a compelling Broker variant in its own right: stock manipulation, incomplete information, and a final cull with real bite.
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Review Aeronautica Imperialis: Wings of Vengeance
Aeronautica Imperialis: Wings of Vengeance looks like a straight dice-heavy dogfight until it asks you to fly properly. There is real positional depth here, provided list balance has not settled the engagement before anyone takes off.
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Review Chicago 1875: City of the Big Shoulders
Chicago 1875: City of the Big Shoulders is a dense economic game that looks substantially more balanced once the full company set is in play and the rules are applied correctly. It is unforgiving in the manner of an 18XX, which here feels like a design choice rather than a flaw.
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Review Pulsar 2849
Pulsar 2849 has a genuinely fresh way of distributing its dice, but builds around it a rather solitary and demanding planning exercise.
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Review Edge of Darkness
Edge of Darkness takes Mystic Vale’s card crafting and places it in a far more variable, scenario-driven frame. It is worth investigating, but it demands shelf space, table time, and a trial game before a purchase.
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Review Scorpius Freighter
Scorpius Freighter is a noticeably weightier AEG game, but it does not make the climb forbidding. It is a sensible bridge between gateway fare and something that asks for more thought.
