Reviews

Squaring Circleville is a lean, fast euro built around a rondel, gradually improving actions, and strong racing/area-control pressure. It is highly abstract, but refreshingly clean for groups tired of overloaded designs.

EPIC Mode makes Commands & Colors: Napoleonics feel even more like what I want from a big Napoleonic confrontation: more scale, more tactics, and, naturally, far more cannon fire.

Unfathomable is a well-produced, slightly more streamlined Galactica-like game that pleasantly surprised me. But once the hidden enemy is identified early, much of its tension and fun drains away.

Star Scrappers: Orbital is a tight, aggressive card game of around an hour, with enough variety to make me want to revisit it. It does not promise world-changing depth, but it knows exactly what it is: an enjoyable game for opening or closing a game night.

Star Scrappers: Cave-in initially looked like a clever, fresh variation on the Orbital formula. Once it finally came off the shelf, it proved that a good idea alone cannot save a game that feels unfinished.

Apogee promises a space race with engineers, tight money, and launches. In practice, for me, it is an hour of preparation until someone draws the card that ends the game.

Factory 42 has a tightly interlocking, delightfully hostile worker-placement core, but its production gets in the way precisely when the game needs to be read clearly. I definitely want to give it another chance, with homemade reference cards.

Endeavor remains excellent, but Age of Expansion felt like an expansion desperately looking for a reason to exist. It adds variety, yet stretches out the very tight economy that makes the base game so good.

Maglev Metro is a clean, well-produced pick-and-deliver game of rail networks, with a clever use of passengers as resources. It lacks the polish of Suburbia and does not surpass the heavier Tramways, but it remains an enjoyable recommendation—provided you stay away from the second map pack unless you are already a devotee.

Le Havre is not perfect, but it remains an enjoyable, demanding Uwe game with a pace that keeps me constantly engaged.

Furnace is a tight four-round auction/production game whose auctions make even losing feel valuable. Production brings a little unnecessary handling, but the central system is clever enough that I think it deserves a place in a collection.

A thematic indie racing game about a three-day Belgian beer tour, which wins more through its premise and atmosphere than through mechanical depth. It did not blow me away, but I would happily bring it back for the right group.

Cosmic Frog won me over first as a spectacle and a promise: colossal immortal frogs harvesting pieces of a shattered world. Thankfully, beneath that wonderfully strange fluff sits a substantial, chaotic game too.

After the Empire has an appealing premise: worker placement combined with castle defence against invaders, in a fairly manageable playtime. But its rules and flow details sent us into two entirely different games—and neither version fully convinced me.

The Conquistadors has an intriguing sandbox core and unusually ruthless interaction, but its development burdens it with needless friction in its dice procedures and player aids. I want to play it again precisely because, underneath that hassle, there is a game unafraid to let players be awful to one another.

Florenza: X Anniversary Edition is an old, charming, mildly brain-burning worker-placement/resource-management game: easy enough to learn, but demanding when you try to play it optimally. Tight at the start and sharper once the group knows it, it remains a pleasant blast from the past.

Successors: Fourth Edition is a heavy, lavishly produced CDG for groups willing to devote time to a bloody struggle among Alexander's successors. The new edition looks magnificent on the table, but it still demands patience with its rules.

Trickerion returned to the table with all of its additions and delivered another strong, chaotic game. It remains a joy once it gets moving, but its teach and the Academy can do real damage to it.

Dune: Imperium remains a timeless, dependable choice for a relaxed game night—especially once the whole group knows it well. The competition stays tight to the end, and the expected intrigue-card nastiness keeps it reliably entertaining.

Tigris & Euphrates returned to the table and, just as it did last year in Parga, immediately reminded us why games this great need no garnish. They simply need the right group of four and a willingness to engage in a civilised, thoroughly uncivilised confrontation.

A troll game that makes its impression through its cards and Soviet-flavoured joke, not through depth. I bought it for the right group, and honestly that is where all of its value lies.

Dominant Species: Marine remains, for me, a very successful and smoother successor to the original. It can still run long, but its fluidity and big, close games keep it firmly high in my estimation.

Small Railroad Empires is a flat, borrowed railway game that wants to be simple and brainy, yet ends up with neither personality nor meaningful decisions. Its close scores do not rescue an experience that often feels decided by setup and random tiles.

Dale of Merchants was a trade acquisition that stared lazily at me from the unplayed pile for a month, until I finally remembered why I had picked it up. It is a clever, distinct deck builder with plenty to chew on for fans of the genre.