Reviews

Point Salad packs drafting, denial and shifting scoring into fifteen minutes of uncomplicated joy. Better still, a fuller table does not dilute the recipe.

Fallout Shelter: The Board Game is a fair translation of the mobile game, including its weary repetition. Its worker-placement core is sound, but the rest feels conspicuously unfinished.

Freedom! is an approachable siege game with cannon fire, dice, and enough tension to keep its history from becoming mere decoration. It captures an unequal struggle without forgetting that two people are sitting across the table trying to win.

The Grand Trunk Journey is an honest Pick and Deliver design with worthwhile hand management and a small deckbuilding layer. It is dry, occasionally tiring, and oddly paced, but its central system makes it a train game I rather enjoy.

Foothills is a compact two-player euro with the feel of a Mini Snowdonia, but without asking for an entire evening. For anyone who enjoys tight, fair games for two, it is a small gem.

Expedition to Newdale first presents itself as a rather colourless light Pfister, but its campaign becomes more convincing once the scenarios begin changing the map and the job in meaningful ways. It is not among his classics, yet it has considerably more replay value than its introductory game suggests.

Glen More II: Chronicles first struck me as a busier Isle of Skye with none of the cheer supplied by the auctions. A later game with Chronicle 3 made a much stronger case for it: the awkward setup is real, but so is the game underneath.

Pandoria is a brisk, tidy tile-placement game with a sound little economy between building for later and scoring now. It does not reinvent anything, but it also has no interest in wasting your evening.

TOKYO TSUKIJI MARKET is a ruthless, luckless economic game with the peculiar logic one expects from the Draper line. It needs repeat plays before its market language becomes legible, but players who want prices to be made by people rather than a deck should make time for it.

Sword of Rome is a large, demanding conflict game, sitting right at the limit of how much rules preparation a group will willingly take on. Once minor powers, alliances and disastrous dice rolls arrive, nobody gets to remain comfortable.

Space Infantry: Resurgence brings back an older Lock & Load cult item, borrowing the mood of the Starship Troopers film without pretending to be a lost classic. It is direct, kit-heavy, and built around missions where both time and casualties close in.

Vulcan High Command brings Vulcans and Andorians to Star Trek: Ascendancy, giving an already sprawling game some welcome new life. It is a long ride, but with four players and the expansions in play, it finally delivers proper Trek atmosphere and a satisfying amount of violence.

Europe Divided initially looks like TS-Light, but its visible-objective structure gives it a distinct identity. It is a compact asymmetric two-player design with a great deal of thought packed into roughly 90 minutes.

Giga-Robo! is an arena game of giant robots, careful pre-fight construction, and a great deal of hitting. It is not the smoothest system around, but it knows how to make PvP bite.

Paladins of the West Kingdom first struck me as the heavier, more rigid relative of Architects. Further plays revealed considerably more bite than I had initially given it credit for.

Abomination: The Heir of Frankenstein is a strongly themed mid-weight euro with a lovely grim presence on the table, though its play can feel a little dry beneath all the stitches and lightning. It is worth trying once for the occasion, but the official Igor Rules look like a far better version of the game.

Aeon's End is a cooperative deckbuilder with a fast, smooth flow, clever enemies, and enough variety to keep calling for another run. There is no player-on-player fight, but it works especially well solo or with two.

Clinic: Deluxe Edition is a dense economic sandbox from viard which looks far more alarming in the rulebook than it does once play begins. It punishes mistakes, makes risk necessary for victory, and rewards patience more than immediate charm.

Dominations: Road to Civilization hides a surprisingly demanding abstract civilisation game beneath its triangular dominoes. It is not entirely tidy, but its engine-building has the same persistent pull as Terraforming Mars.

Card City XL packs a demanding city-building puzzle into 20–30 minutes. Its premise is simple; learning which scenario suits a particular group takes some proper play.

Dark Venture has hard PvP and plenty of recurring combat, which is more than can be said for its ability to stay out of its own paperwork. It wants to be a fantasy adventure; too often, it makes you administer one.

Throne of Allegoria is a neat hidden-bidding game of medieval ambition, with a gentler learning curve than its reputation suggests. Beneath the waiting for a vacant throne is a pleasingly sharp game of pressure and opportunity.

La Granja did not win me over on first acquaintance, but later plays with the right group changed the picture completely. It is one of those games that needs the right table before it shows what it can do.

Living Planet is a carefully made Kickstarter about extracting value from a planet, with enough market collapse to keep everyone attentive. Its lavish presentation occasionally muddies the information, but not the game’s appeal.