Reviews

Battle Line: Medieval is poker with knights, and I mean that as a compliment. It is quick to teach, tight in play, and far more stressful than it initially looks.

Starship Interstellar entered my collection by circumstance and with very low expectations, but it turned out to be substantial and rewarding. It demands a serious teach and plenty of table time, yet it never drains the players as much as its weight suggests.

Black Rose Wars: Rebirth arrived at my door almost by accident, in all-in form and with enough plastic to test the table's structural integrity. Thankfully, this new edition proved far better than the first-edition experience I remembered.

Shipwrights of the North Sea: Redux was my belated introduction to the North Sea line, and thankfully it came after I had already seen what Phillips could do later on. Otherwise, I would have drawn a very hasty—and permanent—wrong conclusion about the designer.

Sankoré: The Pride of Mansa Musa is, for me, a serious contender for euro of the year: a demanding yet pleasantly brain-burning engine builder with excellent synergies. Ideally, someone else will have set it up already, and I will never have to teach it from scratch again.

Artifacts makes the already sprawling Boonlake even fuller, but this time the additions serve a purpose. With more tension, asymmetric choices, and a noticeably shorter playtime, I see it as a clear improvement.

Prussian Rails is an honest, quick dip into train games with shares and a few interesting mechanisms. It does not reach Iberian Rails, but at its price it is hard to dismiss.

Poo Poo Pets is a real-time dice game with a giant whistling poop, which is exactly the sort of concept that seems born for a bad stand-up routine. With my own rules, though, its lovely dice produce a decent Yahtzee clone for young children.

Evenfall is an enjoyable but uneven blend of worker placement, set collection, and light engine building with witches and spells as its theme. It is not a bad game; I simply expected something tighter and better balanced.

Fighters of the Pacific is a lean, zero-luck game of mass air battles in the Pacific that favours clear tactical choices over realism. It is not for anyone looking for a simulation, but it delivers very satisfying aerial engagements for the right audience.

Pest is an unusual euro about Plague Doctors, patient management, and sustained pressure, but the randomness of its plague-spread cards can push it toward either crushing difficulty or excessive abundance. It is an honest big production, though not necessarily a must-have.

1930: The Golden Age of Airlines is a fresh economic game, with the progression and clarity to sit comfortably alongside racing and train games. At four players, however, its final turn can undo what is otherwise an excellent four-hour journey.

Obsession initially won me over as a tight, thematic worker-placement game, but its excessive Victorian packaging makes learning it harder than it needs to be. With the expansions, the experience became wordier and more random for me rather than better.

Fallen Land: A Post Apocalyptic Board Game – 2nd Edition is a substantial, fully sandbox post-apocalyptic RPG-like game, finally smoother and more streamlined. It will not suit every group, but for connoisseurs of the genre it is a top recommendation — and an excellent solo game.

21Moon is a modern 18XX with ambitious, well-integrated new systems and a pace that makes a serious claim to being the quick 18XX. Its terse and frequently unclear rules writing is the one real thorn in an otherwise highly compelling package.

Marvel Zombies won me over despite my initial suspicion: it is a silly, random, and thoroughly enjoyable guilty pleasure. With the right group—or with kids—the Marvel theme and the X-Men combos give it an extra reason to hit the table.

Prime Minister is a thematic GMT political game with approachable rules and a clear idea: keep your faction alive, but ultimately come out a little better than its leader. For me, though, repetition defeated the political intrigue long before the game was over.

As a fan of Pfister and the Great Western Trail series, I found New Zealand to be a substantial and distinctly different entry. It is probably the heaviest game in the series, even if it sits a notch below Argentina for me.

Nova Aetas Renaissance is a lavish, satisfying dungeon-crawl production that has kept our table busy. Its short campaign, rather than being a drawback, turned out to be exactly the commitment we needed.

Dune: Imperium – Uprising stands on its own, while keeping the door open to mixing it with the older game and its expansions. On its own, it felt familiar on the table to me, but with smoother edges.

18India is a shorter, more approachable 18XX with an interesting share-drafting twist, but crucial rules ambiguities and an abrupt ending hold it back. Still, I had a good time and would happily play it again.

Fractal is an indie 4X that feels built by people who have played the genre to death and wanted to tidy up its familiar thorns. It is tiring at first, but extremely promising and already very good.

I backed Age of Comics: The Golden Years purely for its theme at first, but it turned out to be an honest, relaxed economic game inside a very carefully presented package.

Evacuation is a spicy return to form for Vladimir: a thematically odd, demanding euro that constantly made me consider when to push on and when to pull the handbrake. Its abundance of ways to play, however, makes the commitment to repeat plays less straightforward.