Carson City: Big Box

Carson City: Big Box is one of those games that impresses immediately, then somehow spends far too long on the shelf. Bring it back out, let it spread across the table, and the memory returns quickly: this is not a game for peacefully tending your own patch of territory.

We used the horse variant, which gave the game a different pace and new lines of movement. More importantly, we had a particularly aggressive mix of characters. Choosing characters was not polite preparation for the round; it was the opening move in a fight, because every useful option seemed to come with someone across the table ready to turn it against you.

The game moved through its rounds as a proper contest of position and timing. You try to advance your own plan, but the other players are not background scenery: they block, squeeze, and force you to keep asking who is holding the next nasty move. With this character mix, the table became a battlefield. Quite rightly, too.

Then hida did what a player can do when, unusually, they are not already ahead before the finish: he saved his strength and sprinted through the final round, farming the rest of us. It was an excellent game, full of pressure and collisions, with everyone leaving a little bruised and thoroughly pleased. Carson City: Big Box does not merely ask you to play well; it asks whether you can survive the other players.