I call St. Louis home. It’s a large city straddling the border between the East and West United States. It’s also known as America’s first soccer capital. Immigrants brought the sport to the area over a hundred years ago, and the passion persists. We grow up playing it and then we teach it to our…
This is a thing of foolishness. Marcin Welnicki’s boss battler is an absurd 300 hours of content. It’s hundreds of dollars. The box is unreasonably large, oblong, and shining white. It’s like prying open the Ark of the Covenant. And Aeon Trespass: Odyssey will melt your face, whether you’re a Nazi or not. Once you’ve…
It’s sometime-A.M. and half the house is sleeping. The other half is riding the edge of sobriety and screaming at 11 little horses. A small pile of money lies crumpled between pillars of glass and plastic. The size of the bounty doesn’t matter, what matters is that it exists. I shake my fist and let…
Our hobby has conjured the niche word ‘replayability’ to describe how well a game cultivates a desire to return to it. A game that is highly replayable is one that players want to explore repeatedly. It’s something we value because every prospective purchase exists conceptually as our next favorite game. Every title is graded out…
Robotech means nothing to me. Maybe less than nothing as the general anime aesthetic is not something I find appealing. Thus, I can’t speak to how well Robotech: Reconstruction captures its intellectual property or evokes themes therein, but I do know a little something about GMT’s COIN (COunter INsurgency) series, enough to identify the throughline…
Apologies to the faithful, but I don’t hold the Zombicide series in high regard. I’ve played several iterations on this system, and it’s never done much beyond stir the bacteria in my gut. Despite my adoration for several of their titles, including the exceptional Ankh, I am also critical of publisher CMON Games. Specifically, I’m…
There’s been a lot of fuss surrounding Blood on the Clocktower. Reviewer troupe Shut Up & Sit Down controversially exalted the game prior to its Kickstarter campaign. Backlash ensued. It didn’t hurt the crowdfunding effort, however, as it found success and resulted in a physically impressive product to pair with its equally impressive cult following.…
Undaunted: Stalingrad is a powerful experience. It takes Trevor Benjamin and David Thompson’s acclaimed system and marries it to a campaign format that is engrossing and transcendent. The battle of Stalingrad is captured with such purpose and intimacy that I felt as if I was wandering through an HBO miniseries immersed in dramatic action. I’ve…
Eight men, spread far enough apart to minimize casualties in the case of an explosion, yet close enough together to keep their fears in check. They snuck through the French countryside in search of danger. Sgt. Gillick wasn’t green, but he also wasn’t grizzled. Unfortunate circumstances led to his squad performing reconnaissance on the sector.…
Giant mechs beating the hell out of each other in verdant fields. Asymmetrical loadouts and special technology. Weapons expressed through custom decks. Action programming tickled with a dramatic damage system. Vibrant illustrations and inspired mecha designs. What’s not to like? Embryo Machine. This is not a terrible game. Rather, it’s disappointing. Embryo Machine is a…
Player Elimination 