Reviews

Dinosaur Island is a cute, uncomplicated, slightly chunky production euro. It makes a solid way into medium-weight games of this sort, even if it does not yet have much bite.

Agra is the rare heavy euro that earned an unequivocal 10 from me. It has even displaced The Gallerist as my favourite game in that weight class.

Mi Tierra: New Era is a pleasantly honest answer to the suspiciously neat pitch of a farming euro for six in under an hour. It is easy to enter, but has more weight than that pitch suggests.

A chance English-language find in Rome turned out to be a carefully built rondel euro about raising cathedrals. It shows its age in places, but its pace is still remarkably good.

Periorbis is a lean, low-luck worker-placement game built around clear planning rather than a scattergun of scoring opportunities. It applies honest pressure, but its narrow economy and weak recovery prospects stop it becoming something exceptional.

Traveller Customizable Card Game: Two Player Starter Set has real space-exploration promise, along with a learning curve that does not greet newcomers gently. It works well head-to-head, provided everyone accepts that the first couple of games are survival training.

Unfair is an easy-going engine-builder with a distinctly nasty pack of cards hidden up its sleeve. It shines with two or three players; add more, and the table may decide to demolish one person together.

A Handful of Stars is more abstract and less richly themed than the other two games in its trilogy, yet it is plainly the stronger design. Its rulebook is a dreadful first obstacle, but repeat plays make the payoff clear.

Time has not changed my first impression of Grand Prix. Put plenty of people around the table, though, and it finds its purpose.

Days of Ire: Budapest 1956 finds its proper tension with three players: two rebels facing one Russian player. I liked it as a two-player game; this was a much better fit.

Peak Oil is a light, quick economic game that never stays on the table long enough to become irritating. Its tension fades early, but there is enough easy table pleasure here to make another play welcome.

Altiplano produced a game full of resource grabs, score-related mischief, and ambitious attempts to locate a crack in the system. Wood and alpacas: the essentials.

Mare Nostrum: Empires has the reputation, the theme, and the rule set to suggest a grand evening. At our table, it never made good on that suggestion.

Battle for Rokugan is not A Game of Thrones wearing a different badge. It is a sharp area-control game full of fights and betrayals, and it deserves better than that lazy comparison.

Gentes did not disappoint, though it handed me an almost doubled score deficit without making my mistake obvious. It deserves another play, preferably when my brain has not already clocked off.

DRCongo is a hard, demanding economic game, and getting the rules right only makes its pressure more satisfying. One missing bit of market leverage does not stop it earning a regular place among the games worth revisiting every year.

Mini Rails shows its shape with three players. At five, it turns that shape into a compact family argument, and does it in half an hour.

Import / Export takes the lead/follow engine of Glory to Rome and Eminent Domain, gives it an economic setting, and makes a more convincing case for a fuller table. Its graphic design gets in the way, but the system moves well enough to merit further plays.

Mistborn: House War has plenty of setting flavour and a handsome production, and it comes alive with five people at the table. Its negotiation is lively, but its timing can turn the whole thing into a muddle.

Whistle Stop is a tight pick-up-and-deliver game with more going on beneath the surface than its pace suggests. It moves briskly, but an unclear rules presentation can derail an early play.

Heart of Crown is an honest Dominion-style deckbuilder: it does not reinvent the genre, but it adds a little complexity and can become properly lively with the right card sets. The manga theme is a welcome extra.

Hull Breach: In Defiance of Dictators makes a slightly awkward first teach feel worthwhile very quickly. The Kickstarter package also feels like money well spent.

The Great Zimbabwe is not the heavy beast it first appears to be. It is a deep economic game that needs a more readable rulebook and opponents willing to be rather less polite.

Global Mogul is a light area-control game with a little economy and production folded in, and it deserves better than its reputation suggests. Its bargain-basement production does it no favours, but there is a pleasant short game underneath.