Reviews

Plutocracy is tempting crowdfunding bait, with a great theme and mechanisms that sound excellent. On the table, though, it becomes a dry optimisation exercise with an almost predetermined path to victory.

A substantial, app-free campaign game with excellent writing and an ambitious structure, but one that exposes serious scaling problems and eventually grows tiring in its combat and crafting. With four heroes, it finally shows the full game it wants to be.

Maracaibo’s expansion finally pulled me out of my reluctance, but there are no earth-shaking surprises hiding in the box. Thankfully, the base game remains excellent — though it may breathe better with three players.

A minimalist civilization filler that sets up quickly, stays brief, and still brings thought and noise to the table. For me, it shines most with 3–4 players.

D.E.I.: Divide et Impera looks like a carefully produced miniatures game, with rich material and enough content to keep returning to the table. It does not reinvent the wheel, but it promises straightforward conflict without dice.

Lawyer Up is a very interesting two-player game that, while not exceptional, improves greatly over repeated plays. For now I prefer it to Radlands, even though I have only seen Case 00.

Hidden Leaders proved to be the right, undemanding choice for six people when nobody was in the mood for anything heavy. It is quick, playful, and easy to imagine ending up under plenty of Christmas trees.

A slightly old-school hidden worker-placement game about Renaissance Genoese families, full of secret missions, sabotage, and thoroughly unhumanitarian ambitions. Fiddly but enjoyable, and particularly valuable as an option for five players.

Heaven & Ale is a tough, clever semi-rondel game that rewards patience and reveals its real depth after the first few plays.

A light, quickly teachable wargame about South America’s greatest bloodshed, focused on troop manoeuvres rather than dice rolls. It is not the best in its genre, but it is an honest and suitably historical-feeling offering.

Auctions, route building, and airplanes were enough to send me to Kickstarter. Connecting Flights, however, turns those ingredients into an exhausting, flat experience with no real reason to play early.

Circadians: Chaos Order takes on the difficult proposition of an asymmetric 3X area-control game and, unusually for the genre, makes its individual systems click together. It is demanding and lengthy with a full table, but rewards groups that want conflict without tolerating runaway snowballs.

The Red Cathedral is a breezy, approachable euro that manages to offer thought without becoming tiring. The Contractors expansion is clever and rich, but it noticeably shifts the game toward something heavier.

I approached Firefly: Misbehavin’ with plenty of suspicion, but it ended up being a pleasant surprise. It is a thematic faction-based deckbuilder with lots of interaction and a fair amount of chaos, especially with four players.

A relaxed semi-co-op deduction game with pulp looks and a few genuinely clever ideas, though it needs one exploratory first play before it starts showing what it does well.

Front Line No Komrades is a light party game with a pleasingly neurotic communist aesthetic, but it never becomes as funny or brisk as its fluff promises. We had a good time, but I would not buy it—only accept it as a gift.

Xia is an honest, enjoyably chaotic space sandbox: it can deliver exploration, trading, and cannon fire in the same session. Randomness and downtime are real thorns, but the freedom of its system makes them easy to forgive.

Brazil: Imperial has a brisk flow and several genuinely good ideas, but it feels like a game that left development before deciding exactly what it wanted to be. A second play corrected a scoring mistake, not the sense of an unfinished whole.

My Father's Work is an extravagantly ambitious, thematic title with a production that screams from the table—perhaps more than it needs to. Despite being substantial, my first play left me with more fatigue and disappointment than the feeling of a grand scientific creation.

The Transcontinental does not invent new mechanisms, but it joins familiar ones with remarkable precision into a tight economic game. With three players I found the right balance of pressure and room; at four, I have one reservation.

Bitoku is a spectacularly overloaded euro which, despite its initial chaos, eventually makes sense at the table. Beneath its parade of systems lies a very good core, but to me it is not as polished as the hype suggests.

Catherine: The Cities of the Tsarina is an honest, approachable tableau builder with several paths to victory, without demanding the mental investment of Furnace. It is ideal when I want something more substantial than point salad for a more casual group.

An old, slightly odd game that does not always seem certain of its identity, but ultimately delivers an honest, undemanding puzzle. Its Big Box gives it impressive longevity, even if I wish the expansions were organised more cleanly.

Pingyao: First Chinese Banks initially made me worry about my Kickstarter pledge, but on the table it proved to be a tight, highly competitive dice-placement game. The rules need some patience, yet there is a real game underneath them.