Contributor
WhiteColarGamer
Suave, flamboyant, and unrepentant about it. Drawn to deluxe editions, upgraded components and a table that looks as good as it plays.
🎁 2 kudos from readers
164 reviews
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Review Shadow Rivals
Shadow Rivals wears its Smash Up ancestry openly, then adds more strategy and arithmetic to the family resemblance. Its thieves, loot, roses and aggressively kawaii art are a rather different proposition.
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Review Colonial Twilight: The French-Algerian War, 1954-62
Even a slightly uneven third game showed why Colonial Twilight deserves an unqualified recommendation. Its tension survives a mismatch in experience remarkably well.
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Review The Expanse Boardgame: Doors and Corners
Doors and Corners initially looks like an expensive box of very little. On the table, it proves to be the expansion The Expanse should have had from the start.
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Review Dice Forge
Dice Forge is a brisk, welcoming dice game that makes rather more ceremony of its central trick than it needs to. Its changing setups and excellent insert still make it a very good family-table or holiday-bag choice.
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Review Born to Serve
Born to Serve is a brisk little area-control game about unemployed superheroes competing for waiting jobs, with a joke that lands and production that makes the small box feel special. It does not reinvent anything, but it knows when to leave the table.
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Review Railroad Revolution
Railroad Revolution sat unopened because I had mistaken it for another game; once it reached the table, it quickly proved itself a brisk, approachable optimisation game. It is not Nippon or Madeira, and it does not need to be.
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Review Xenon Profiteer
Xenon Profiteer is a neat little card game with a small engine-building core. It will not linger in the mind, but it fills half an hour pleasantly and asks very little in return.
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Review Photodump
Photodump is a lean, quick dice-driven engine builder, and Shy Pluto is what lets it properly settle in. It asks for no advanced degree, but the ten-game campaign gives its neat little systems a welcome sense of consequence.
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Review 1883: Building Railroads in Northern Italy
1883: Building Railroads in Northern Italy is a hard Italian railway game where random events keep turning the table over from round to round. It is a distinctive experience for players tired of the usual fare, but not a safe recommendation.
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Review Yinzi
Yinzi feels like a proper return to form after a few unconvincing efforts from the same company. It is not perfect, but it is a satisfying, demanding Heavy Euro with enough bite to justify the evening.
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Review Black Rose Wars
Black Rose Wars is a substantial, carefully presented game with respectable miniatures and a pleasing mix of strategy and gleeful aggression. It is not, however, the Mage Wars successor one might expect.
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Review Caverna: The Forgotten Folk
Druids feels far more at home with the original Caverna than Journeyman does. It is an excellent early impression, though some druid tiles may yet prove a little too generous.
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Review Heroes Welcome
A light family euro about goblin shopkeepers, gullible heroes, and the loot they can be persuaded to part with. It has a charming premise and a steady hand, though the theme could stand to misbehave more.
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Review Architects of the West Kingdom
Architects of the West Kingdom earns the noise around it: a substantial cathedral-building game that keeps its scoring rather better hidden than you expect.
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Review Millennium Blades
Millennium Blades brought back the slightly nervous pleasure of old competitive card-game days. It did not land for everyone, but most of the table found a very good version of that feeling again.
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Review Ground Floor (Second Edition)
Ground Floor (Second Edition) is a substantial euro that earns its high price by being unusually good at five players. It is not a casual closer, but it was a very satisfying night at the table.
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Review 18Lilliput
18Lilliput is a light railway game with enough bite to linger after the table is cleared. An early two-player concern about the green starting company remains only a concern; later plays made the stronger case for the game.
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Review Symphony No.9
Symphony No.9 feels like Tulip Bubble’s sensible next step: more of a eurogame, but no more complicated than it needs to be. It is a compact bidding game that makes its decisions matter.
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Review Stellar Leap
Stellar Leap is a light space game with handsome table presence and more to reveal after the first play. Its smooth pace rewards a group that comes back for another orbit.
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Review Brass: Birmingham
Brass: Birmingham gives an old favourite the production it always deserved. It is a handsome, weighty railway game, and calling it Ticket to Ride for Serious Children is meant as high praise.
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Review Lisboa
Two full plays are enough to show that Lisboa is not random point-salad sprawl, but a game with flow and real strategic shape. It needs time to become familiar, then pays that time back.
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Review Lowlands
Lowlands never made for a bad evening, but its welcome wore out far sooner than I expected.
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Review Pendragon: The Fall of Roman Britain
Pendragon: The Fall of Roman Britain is every bit as weighty as its reputation suggests, but the effort pays off in a deeply engaging and enjoyable game.
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Review Concordia: Gallia / Corsica
Concordia: Gallia / Corsica keeps Concordia firmly in our regular rotation, with Gallia offering a taut, satisfying five-player board.
