Catherine: The Cities of the Tsarina

I wanted a tableau builder that could come out with a casual group without asking everyone to clock in for the kind of mental shift Furnace can demand. Catherine: The Cities of the Tsarina is an honest answer to that search: there is enough to build and watch develop in front of you, but it does not turn a Tuesday after work into an accountancy exam.

Each player builds a row of action cards in their tableau. You then burn cards of matching colours to trigger those actions; it is a straightforward idea with a pleasing little pull to it, because every colour you spend is something you will not have later.

Scoring offers more than one route to victory, so you are not simply pursuing one obvious target. Attention stays mostly on the tableau in front of you and the connections you can make within it, while the iconography does nearly all of its explaining at a glance; perhaps one or two cards need a second look.

It sits a click or two above point salad without overheating the brain. If you want an approachable, readable game with a little substance beneath its clean surface, it is well worth a look; quietly excellent at what it sets out to do.