Reviews

Feudum is a heavy euro with a psychedelic character, almost no downtime, and plenty to keep you occupied. I liked it a lot, but balance issues and a little unnecessary rules clutter keep it from being my game of the year.

The Sands of Time is a pleasantly familiar civ game with action selection at its heart. It has nearly everything I look for in the genre, yet it left me feeling that something was missing.

My Fair Princess never quite makes it to the table here: the real star is my old mancave, apparently student-poor enough to serve as a documentary set. It is a reminder that a collection can look very different to us than it does to a TV crew.

Corporate America pleasantly fooled me: I expected an empty “humorous” game, but found a party game that creates betrayals, lies, and spectacular complaining with the right group. It is not for every night or every lineup, but with five or six people it can become glorious chaos.

Sidereal Confluence initially looks like an intergalactic warehouse exploded across the table, but beneath the chaos lies an exceptionally lively negotiation game. It wants a crowd, some nerve, and the right attitude from everyone, or the whole recipe can go wrong.

The recent Kickstarter edition of Paranoia remains a hilariously malicious RPG, provided your group is ready to play dirty. It is not the right entry point for anyone who thinks D&D exhausts what an RPG can be.

Sword & Sorcery: Immortal Souls is, for me, by far the best dungeon crawler of its generation — and one of the very few Kickstarters I genuinely regret missing. It is sturdy, funny, and unexpectedly enjoyable cooperative brawling, even for someone who usually dislikes overly cuddly group-play concepts.

Hexpanse is an honest, quick area-control game that hides more thought than its lean rules initially suggest. It will not suit every group, but with the right one it can be great fun.

Pax Renaissance left me completely shut out: the rules, player aids, and explanations never gave me either a clear picture or a desire for another game. For people who enjoy this kind of chaos, fair enough; I found it unbearable.

1805: Sea of Glory is a demanding, asymmetric simulation of naval blockade, rather than the wargame of huge battles one might expect. After a third of our first game, it left me wanting a second, full day at sea.

Dinosaur Island is simple, cute, and pleasantly chunky: a good gateway to medium-weight production-based euros, though it does not yet give me the burn I want.

Agra is an unequivocal ten for me and, by only my second play, it had dethroned The Gallerist as my favourite heavy euro. Keller surpasses his already likeable La Granja and Solarius Mission by a wide margin here.

Mi Tierra: New Era pleasantly proved me wrong: it is a brisk farming-production euro that is simple without being lightweight. I found it too open at four players, but I suspect it will show its best face with five or six.

Hamburgum entered my collection almost by accident, as the only English-language copy I found in Rome. Thankfully, it turned out to be a tightly designed rondel-based euro that still deserves to return to the table.

Periorbis is a middling indie production with several strong ideas and an honest, low-luck challenge. It never quite takes off, though, mainly because it feels shallower than I wanted and offers little room for players who fall behind to recover.

Traveller CCG is effectively a compact LCG with a strong space-exploration feel and clear echoes of Decipher’s old Star Trek CCG. It does, however, demand familiarity with its icons and a little time before it stops fighting you.

Unfair left me with a very positive impression over the two games I managed to play. It is relaxed and enjoyable, but do not let its simplicity fool you: there is plenty of fighting in it.

A Handful of Stars is the most abstract and thematically “dry” entry in the trilogy, but for me it is also clearly the best. It demands patience with an appallingly bad rulebook, yet the game itself rewards that patience.

Almost a year and a half after my first play, Grand Prix leaves me with exactly the same impression: it is great fun with a big crowd around the table. I am already tempted to bring it to the club for a little tournament.

I already liked Days of Ire: Budapest 1956 as a two-player game, but with a third player I found the setup that brings it out best. An evening that began with one unfortunate absence ended up flowing much better than we expected.

Peak Oil is a light, quick economic game with a few interesting ideas and a pleasant table presence. It loses momentum, however, once the likely winner becomes clear too early.

Altiplano gave us an epic session full of displays of skill, resource grabbing, and the necessary dose of absurdity. Fisticuffs and alpacas, in other words: exactly as it should be.

With its high BGG rating, friends who play it regularly, and a theme that sounded right up our alley, Mare Nostrum: Empires delivered one of my biggest disappointments of the year. It may need the right group and a particular way of playing; I still want to give it one more chance before writing it off for good.

Battle for Rokugan is unfairly burdened by the label “an AGoT re-theme.” To me, it is a very strong area-control game full of fighting and betrayal, and one that honours its IP.