Reviews

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.

Bloody Business turns Scarface 1920 from a flat area-control game into a sprawling gang war full of pressure, intrigue and gunfire. It takes a long evening, but it finally earns that commitment.

Ronin is Queen Games doing a lean, thematic area-control game with enough substance to fill an hour, but not enough rules to make an evening of it. It needs a crowded table, though: below four players, its case becomes much harder to make.

Fromage and Formaggio are two versions of an ambitious design that can be mixed together for near-endless variety. Their rotating cheese board and simultaneous play deliver strategy without the drag of downtime.

Feya's Swamp combines euro-style racing with area control in a magical wetland contested by animal tribes. It is dense, enjoyable and full of viable routes to victory, though its asymmetry could use a little more balancing.

Crisis: 1914 dresses a light push-your-luck game in diplomatic decks, Belle Époque atmosphere and plenty of opportunities to wreck someone else’s plans. It is not as heavy as it looks, but it can become gloriously messy with the right group.

The Druids of Edora is a dense optimisation game that proves far more demanding than its board first suggests. With several rewarding scoring routes and little room for wasted actions, it pays back careful planning.

Unmatched Adventures: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles turns the familiar confrontation into a cooperative boss fight with smart adjustments and the sort of difficulty that pulls you straight back in. Shredder has already made his point.

Meltwater is an odd, brisk two-player strategy game in which nuclear winter is not backdrop but the clock coming for you. It is less a straight wargame than a nastier contest over who goes hungry first.

The Old King's Crown is a hard, fair asymmetric area-control game that asks the group to learn its factions. Once that knowledge is around the table, its sharp edges become the point.

Angel's Share is a dry, clean economic game about casks and single malt, where the market becomes the battlefield. It is especially strong with five players.

Azul: Queen's Garden is a hex-tile drafting game that landed far better than I expected. It moves briskly, gives you proper decisions, and makes scoring feel worth chasing again and again.

Nippon: Zaibatsu brings fresh warmth to a clever, carefully judged economic euro that had quietly slipped to the back of the cupboard. The ships are a meaningful improvement, rather than a shiny extra for its own sake.

Stupor Mundi wears the full German-euro uniform and leaves much the same aftertaste: dry, busy, and oddly hard to recall. It is not unpleasant; it simply gives little reason to come back for another serving.

Sanctuary distils the Ark Nova flavour into a much more approachable tile-drafting game without making the decisions trivial. It is a very pleasant design; I would still usually choose its larger sibling.

A light hidden-squad-placement game of magic knights, dice and festival quests. There is a good spark here, but its player interaction does not quite put enough pressure on the table.

Forestry is a tight resource-management euro about sustainable logging that does not merely survive at four players; it gets properly dangerous there. Plans remain flexible, the final rounds close in hard, and the margin can genuinely be a single point.

Ayar: Children of the Sun is Grandon-Lopiano’s third Osprey design after Merv and Sankore, sitting neatly between them in length and complexity. It is a Euro with genuine ideas of its own, and one that earns a second play before its shape becomes clear.

Galaxy Trucker failed to win over either the younger recruit or me on its second outing. I can still imagine a four-player table finding the laughter we missed, but it has not earned another launch yet.