The Waylanders

I bought it for the dice, hexes, and wood; adulthood has peculiar shopping criteria. It looks promising on the table, then the rulebook buries its rules under story and artwork, with translation issues and very little interest in taking you cleanly from A to B. Rulebook grade: sent out before break. It could lose you halfway through the first game.

Get past that barricade and you have a hex-based skirmish with a pleasing action-point system. Players move their figures, spend actions on their choices, and get to hitting each other quickly, without asking anyone to arrive fluent in cards, decks, or a full character encyclopaedia.

The strategy is light: Shadespire with its deck left at home. In the four-player scenarios, especially once events join in, the game gives people a reason to collide rather than merely tour the hexes; you spot someone exposed, pile in, and suddenly everyone is watching the same corner of the map. With house rules, there may be more to extract from it too.

This is not a purchase for the casually curious, and it does not justify its retail price. But if you are properly keen on skirmish games and find it much cheaper, it has a case — if only because its decent 28mm miniatures can have a second life on an RPG table.