Reviews

Québec, then, a game that was first released in 2007 and shows its age a little, but overall it is interesting and—once you get the hang of it—starts becoming honestly complex.

Back to our beloved blocks and dice that make us cry, this time with the epic Waterloo. As happens to anyone who has their C&C loose like I do, it took us longer to set up than to play, without that meaning the experience was bad. Very decent brawling, a nice and epic battle…

So far, GMT’s lunch time games have not particularly grabbed me. Both Fort Sumpter and Red Flag Over Paris were, generously speaking, mediocre and boring. Czechoslovakia is a notch above, it somewhat resembles the considerably better Crisis:1914, which has similar mechanisms, but still no...

If you’re not playing anyway, why not go fishing? A game that slipped away from the temple’s procurement department, but ended up in the collection of the other cardboard collector in the group, who, together with the now-viral little rules-explanation hand, proceeded to serve us a seafood menu. Basically, Thesauros…

As time goes by, everything bends, even the serious objections I had regarding co-op “trash”. Every year that passes more and more cooperative dungeon crawlers see the table, and the truth is that things have gone from cringe 9000 more towards “we had a good time but we could have done better…

Just as Sauron’s shadow began to spread across Middle-earth, so too did this innocent little game with its pleasant graphics, little animals, and Knizia’s signature come to stir the waters and turn the table from innocent hobbits into an Uruk-hai feast. My first encounter with this piece reminded me of some innocent ch…

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.