Reviews

SpaceCorp with Ventures is a tight, lively full package, and it is notably better at three, where blocking and close scores make every move matter. You may complain before realising how dangerous your company becomes in the final phase; that is part of the pleasure.

EPOS: A Gentes Game gives the much-loved Gentes a modest polish and a campaign of scenarios that seems ready to pull it in fresh directions. Its one serious demand is a properly organised box.

Red Dust Rebellion may be the most demanding COIN I have played, and perhaps the best. Its wildly asymmetrical factions look liable to collapse into nonsense; instead, they form an unusually well-balanced whole.

Imperial Borders takes Napoleonic warfare and turns it into a cleaner, more symmetrical wargame rather than a historical simulation. We did not complete a full game, but the preparation, demonstrations, and lengthy opening analysis made a persuasive case.

Bunny Kingdom Town is a quick, strictly two-player city builder with resources, small engines, and a fair bit of luck in its objectives. It does not reinvent anything, but it teaches fast and plays pleasantly.

Cold War: CIA vs KGB is not the last word in games about its subject. But for a child trying to understand a war with no famous battlefield attached, it is a gentle and useful place to begin.

Shards of Creation is a trick-taking game that lands easily with younger players, then gives them reasons to reach for its more demanding parts. It is simple to enter and has room to grow with the group.

Propolis is a fresh, light city builder with pleasing resource management and the good sense to finish in under an hour. It offers enough shape to feel satisfying without asking for an entire evening.

A knotty worker-placement euro with engine building, a touch of area majority, and more player friction than the genre usually permits. Perfectly competent, though its turn-order system keeps it short of excellence.

Knee Deep in Hexes is an honest, luck-free duel with the urgent economy of a classic resource-rush RTS. The rules are light, but repeat games develop teeth.

Horizon Forbidden West: Seeds of Rebellion is a carefully produced co-op boss battler that comes alive in combat and loses momentum in the campaign between fights. Nine sessions and roughly 80% of the main story later, our group is unlikely to see it through.

Abalone still has the simple pull of an old challenge waiting on the shelf, and it has found a new opponent at home. Take away the nostalgia, though, and it now feels somewhat dated.

Toy Battle is a very clever two-player game: easy to teach, quick to get moving, and kept fresh by its different maps. Children can take it to their friends and teach it themselves, which is about as strong a recommendation as you can get.

Dune: War for Arrakis is a lavish asymmetric conflict game that takes the broad shape of War of the Ring and makes it fit Dune rather than merely wearing the licence. The base game works well; Spacing Guild makes the experience noticeably better.

The First Tsar: Ivan the Terrible is a light, satisfying euro that takes familiar ideas and wears them more comfortably than Rurik did. It leaves the table pleased rather than dazzled: a very good evening, if not the automatic final pick.

World Order puts multi-use cards, area control and production into an asymmetric superpower game with a notably clean core. It is decision-heavy and, for me, clearly stronger than Hegemony.

Arcs improves markedly once the advanced rules, asymmetric alien factions, and their powers enter the picture. It still leaves too much of its balance to the people around the table, but this is no longer an automatic no.

A welcoming wargame trip to the Bulge that does not require a staff college first. It keeps enough historical flavour to matter, enough strategy to invite another try, and enough dice to start arguments.

Cthulhu: Dark Providence won me over on a first play, despite the understandable fatigue around the Mythos theme. It has a smooth pace, a sense of depth, and more than enough reason to return.

Star Wars: The Deckbuilding Game – Clone Wars Edition is a pleasant, approachable way into a beloved Star Wars era for a younger fan. But for someone already rather full of deck-builders, it does not quite deliver the spark its reputation suggests.

Lairs is a quick, clever two-player game of dungeons, monsters and loot, with no interest in taking itself too seriously. The base box welcomes younger players; any expansion gives the grown-ups a little more bite.

Mindclash’s Revenant has a straightforward central premise, a theme that lands, and a remarkable talent for turning both into a very dense machine. I enjoyed the play, but even seasoned heavy gamers may find it carrying more machinery than it needs.

Unmatched: Teen Spirit makes a strong case for short, thematic duels. It works especially well for a parent-and-child game, provided you do not begin with one of the more complicated characters.

West Story: A Town Building Game is a tight tableau builder with an appealing dice mechanism, but its scoring and pacing never quite settle into place. It is a middling experience, though one I would still happily play again.