Reviews

Stone Age shows its age beside newer worker-placement games, yet it remains a clear, competitive game that is easy to pick up. A nine-year-old can understand it — and still make you regret giving them an opening.

Skybridge is a modular resource-management game with no grand claim to novelty, but it makes for a pleasant, honest evening at the table. It will not set your brain on fire, and sometimes that is precisely the point.

Cross Bronx Expressway compresses the COIN format into a three-player contest between capital, the state, and communities, moving through six distinct moments in the Bronx’s history. It is dense, peculiar, and demanding, but there is considerable depth for players prepared to stay with it.

Keyside gives the Key series a sharp, demanding revival: a dirty euro full of blocking, clashes, and decisions that bite. For groups who enjoy getting in one another’s way, it is one of the year’s stronger games.

Recall gives you the sweep of a substantial eurociv without demanding an evening of mental ash. At three players it produced a properly tight fight, with several viable ways forward and very little luck steering the result.

Sword & Sorcery: Arcane Portal preserves what made the core box stand out, then sends it into a more poisonous campaign. It needs one experienced person at the table to keep things moving, but pays that effort back in tension and action.

Molly House has a distinct voice and the nerve to use it, but it asks everyone at the table to learn its dialect before it can speak. I did not find the effort sufficiently rewarding.

Puerto Rico 1897: Special Edition finally gave me a first look at a landmark game I had somehow missed. I found more to admire in the lavish object on the table than in the game it contains.

Quorum is a compact drafting and combo game with enough bite to avoid becoming a harmless half-hour filler. It does not have the fuller ambition of Devir’s more substantial small boxes, but it is admirably clear about its own scale.

My third visit to Shackleton Base: A Journey to the Moon was the one that finally landed: a substantial heavy euro with some proper elbowing, but without arbitrary punishment. The three corporations in the game matter enormously to how enjoyable the session becomes.

Castle Combo looks like a game for younger players, yet it landed far better than expected with a table of adults too. I would recommend it without hesitation to eight-to-ten-year-olds looking for something light and mentally healthy.

Beer & Bread is a compact production and set-collection game with a properly useful reverse draft at its centre. It does not reinvent the millstone; it does know where the friction belongs.

Echoes of Time is an odd action-programming game with clever machinery and a sharp appetite for player interference. It is not without interest, but its busy systems and discard locks can make it hard company.

Lightning Train welds bag building to pick up and deliver with real pressure and unusually tidy route design. Its rulebook makes a poor first impression; the game itself does not.

Speakeasy is a tight, multi-layered worker-placement euro in which strategies collide without requiring players to shoot one another. Its initial density conceals a system of lucid logic, hard consequences, and considerable replay value.

Nemesis: Retaliation still knows how to stage an alien-infested disaster, but its base and safety measures made this outing feel more static than I wanted. The spectacle remains; the pressure did not always arrive with it.

Covenant is a hefty, generously stuffed Devir Euro that brings no fresh fantasy premise or mechanical revelation. What it does bring is a satisfying tableau builder with enough progression and shape to make the clutter worthwhile.

Railway Boom folds cube rails, sequential auctions and a light engine into a brisk, highly replayable railway game. Its rotating scoring targets give each session a different strategic centre of gravity.

Perseverance: Castaway Chronicles – Episodes 3 & 4 take the earlier build-and-explore framework and tighten it into two demanding heavy euros. Episode 3 is the more open, combo-led design; Episode 4 narrows the sandbox slightly in return for even harsher planning pressure.

Port Royal: Big Box is a light push-your-luck game with pirate salt, small risks, and gloriously bad judgement. The base game is no great revelation, but it gets laughs and makes another play feel like an easy decision.

Aldebaran Duel is a tight, quick two-player tableau builder that fits neatly into the gap after work. It does not reinvent drafting; it knows exactly how to make drafting annoy the person opposite you.

Imperial Stars II: Legacy is an old-school hex-and-counter space wargame in the most honest sense: two empires, fleets on a map, and no interest in peaceful coexistence. Its deluxe edition looks the part, while its streamlined rules keep the conflict comfortably close to an hour.

Bier Pioniere is a tight, medium-weight worker-placement euro with properly connected systems and an ending that refuses to let engine building coast to the finish. It belongs firmly to the classic German school, for better and, occasionally, for older habits.

Light Speed: Arena is a tiny spaceship disaster with a phone camera: throw ships, take a photo, and find out what you destroyed. Often, it is your own base.