Another top 10 list? Absolutely. People love this stuff. I’m not feeling a lengthy introduction, though. I’ve played almost everything I wanted to that was released over the past 12 months. The gaming year has been kind. There are outliers like Final Girl or Summoner Wars 2nd Edition, titles I’ve been unable to track down,…
Uncertainty dominates our lives. Events continue to be postponed or canceled. Kickstarter delivery dates have shifted from optimistic white lies to blatant punch lines. My preferred grocer hasn’t restocked frozen broccoli in three months. But there has been one constant; that is the quality of Restoration Games’ Unmatched. This system, comprised of many standalone sets,…
Games Workshop’s Dungeon Bowl is frivolous and incoherent in the best of ways. This subterranean take on Blood Bowl was originally released in 1989 and returns this year with a deluxe boxset. It’s an over-the-top zany thing where randomness trumps strategy. Each play unfolds as a silly story with weirdos reliving the glory days of…
Admittedly, that title would work much better if this was a scathing review, which it’s not. In fact, Resident Evil 3 improves in several ways upon Steamforged Games’ mediocre RE2 board game. It’s a very solid, if unspectacular, title that provides a surprisingly relaxed co-operative dungeon crawl experience punctuated by moments of breakout tension. This…
This game is innovative. I don’t say it lightly and anyone who’s played this wouldn’t find that statement controversial. But more importantly, Michael Menzel’s The Adventures of Robin Hood has provided the best gaming experience of my daughter’s eight years of existence. And I cherished every second of it. It’s a difficult game to really…
I dig so much of Shiver Me Timbers. Designer Michal Vitkovsky presents us with a sandbox pirate adventure that parallels Merchants & Marauders conceptually. The details of these games are an ocean apart, but your broad goals and desires are mirrored. And this game almost topples the giant, getting it halfway out on the plank…
There is a complex logos at work in Triton Noir’s Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood of Venice. The elaboration is not found in the fairly lean ruleset, an evolution of the stealth mechanisms found in the sublime V-Sabotage (formerly V-Commandos), rather, it’s embedded in the larger arrangement of expansive content and its tenuous relationship with physical capacity.…
Wanted – Dead or Alive and Black Star Rising are meaningful releases in the catalogue of Core Space expansions. They mark the end of the first stage of this game, an era beginning with the core set and now concluding just shy of the standalone First Born. As the backside of an excellent run of…
Like Licensed to ill, Are You Experienced, and Kill ‘Em All, Magnate: The First City is a debut cut built to last. Designer James Naylor presents a very singular take on property development, propped up by an exorbitant production and clever satire. Moreover, he delivers all of it in less than two hours. Let’s talk…
If I’m lucky, each year offers a game which grasps my skull in a vice to wring ample fragments of consciousness from its hollows. These are the ones I sit in my car meditating over, lingering not to hear the end of a song but to consider artistry and dynamics. 2021 has presented two such…
Player Elimination 