Reviews

Pulsar 2849 is a cute dice-placement game with a genuinely fresh idea in how players choose dice each round. Still, its randomness, near-solitaire feel, and demanding scoring setup keep it lower on my list of preferences.

Dice Forge is a quick, neatly organised game with huge replayability, ideal for family sessions or holidays. Its flashy custom-dice trick, however, felt more annoying than worthwhile to me.

Edge of Darkness takes Mystic Vale's card-crafting system and places it in a far more variable, scenario-driven framework. It is not an automatic buy because of its cost and setup, but the variety of its setups is its real strength.

A small indie Kickstarter that pits unemployed superheroes against one another for a restaurant job, with lovely production and light humour. It is a quick, honest area-control game that remained enjoyable on later plays.

Railroad Revolution was the shame of my shelf: it sat shrink-wrapped for over a year because I had completely mistaken it for another game. Two plays in three days were enough to show me a simple, short, and very enjoyable optimization game.

The Godfather: Corleone's Empire is a welcome heresy: CMON, miniatures, and Lang, yet ultimately a fast, thematic, enjoyably confrontational area-control game. It is not revolutionary, but with the right group it has far more substance than you might expect.

Xenon Profiteer is a cute little card game with mini engine-builder elements, and it knows not to outstay its welcome. It is not something I will remember for long, but it does the job for 30–40 pleasant minutes.

Photodump is a simple, quick dice-based engine builder that initially left me merely pleased. Paired with the Shy Pluto mini campaign, though, it became a package I would recommend far more warmly.

Scorpius Freighter is the right next step when gateway games start to feel like too little. It has thought, choices, and almost no luck, without drowning you in rules.

War Chest was the outsider hit that came out of nowhere, reminding me how good a game can be when it is learned instantly but never runs out of depth. It remains an unreserved recommendation for every collection, with one important correction about its best player count.

Gandhi is one of the stranger, more advanced COIN entries: knotty, demanding, and built around balances that take time to grasp. It is not an introduction to the genre, but it gives experienced COIN players a real reason to add it to their collection.

Transatlantic is not merely a “dry copy” of Concordia: across my four plays, it has proved pleasant, interactive, and strategically deep.

Captains of Industry remains my favourite BLTG game at five players: an honest economic game that, when the table is full, gives nobody a free pass.

Escape Plan is an epic winner, full stop. After two back-to-back plays, I can say it without a second thought: buy it with your eyes closed.

The beast returned to the table, this time with seven players and the western map, and although we did not finish, we had a great time. It was one of those games where the table itself tells a whole story of ascent and disaster.

1883 is a hard Italian train game that lets random events reshuffle everything almost every round. Exhausting and unstable, but still an experience for anyone looking beyond the usual choices.

Glorantha: The Gods War feels to me like a more playable, more strategic Cthulhu Wars, with additions that create even more table chaos. It is a shame that the spectacle of its miniatures put me off so strongly.

Underwater Cities is, quite simply, a fantastic game. It bares more teeth at three players, while remaining perfectly good at four.

In Cthulhu Wars, we played a bizarre map with new factions and ended up with some thoroughly honest carnage. The game also showed how much time it demands before you can tell genuine synergies from lopsided interactions.

Patchistory needs one more proper play before I can give it a final verdict. So far, though, it looks like it deserves a place among the good civilization games for four players.

Yinzi feels like the publisher getting back into form: an honest, brain-burning Heavy Euro that is not perfect but remains enjoyable.

A quick, thematic deckbuilding duel with a clear objective and plenty of neat card tricks. I can comfortably recommend SiegeStorm: SiegeMode to anyone who wants to beat up a friend without committing an entire evening.

Black Rose Wars was one of the Kickstarter games I was most looking forward to this year, largely because I love Mage Wars. This first impression rewards that anticipation as a production and as a gloriously confrontational game, but not as a successor to the same kind of experience.

Forged in Steel is a low-luck city builder that refuses to let you peacefully build a city, turning it instead into a site of organised sabotage. Delightfully nasty with the right group, and wholly unsuitable for anyone hoping to keep their friends.